Where the Lake Ends
by Empatheia
Summary: Seven years later, a new hero lands falls out of the sky and washes up on Ogygia's shores. Things go a bit differently this time around.
1. PROLOGUE

Dedicated to Radycat, for many reasons.

When I put that little note at the bottom of the previous story in this series (How Deep is the River), I was not at all expecting this ship to take off the way it did, and all credit for that falls squarely at her feet. I would strongly recommend checking out the #pipalypso tag on her Tumblr as it is full of wonders.

 **Chapter 1:** PROLOGUE

Piper McLean was going to take the year off.

She'd carefully planned for all of her various projects to wind down around the date of her twenty-third birthday, which had passed and been suitably fêted last week.

The new Greco–Roman demigod-and-legacy exchange program was fully orchestrated and ready to take off. Reyna and Annabeth's efforts in New Rome, Percy and Jason's efforts at Camp Half-Blood, and her own tireless intermediation had finally paid off: Greek and Roman demigods and legacies would be taught about each other's histories, be given a chance to experience each other's cultures, and would learn to respect each other and work together from now on. Secrecy hadn't helped anyone in the war against Gaea, and it was inefficient to fight alone when there were allies there for the making.

It was an issue near and dear to her heart, and to the hearts of all the veteran demigods who had fought against Gaea with her, especially the rest of the Seven. How much pain, how much suffering could have been avoided if they'd fought back to back from the start, if they hadn't had to negotiate and learn to trust each other while already under attack? They'd all lost friends and comrades, and were all determined to save their future generations from the kind of pointless pain they'd suffered.

In the mundane world, she had finally completed her double major in political science and history, after five years of hard work and focus. She had a few more supplementary courses planned, just to round out the edges of her education and give her an edge. Once she had everything she wanted under belt, she would start trying in earnest for a job in international relations. It seemed like a foregone conclusion, in a way, but it wasn't. She'd gone through a dozen possibilities before settling into it, realizing that there really wasn't anything she wanted to do more than facilitate world peace. It was a lofty goal; but then, she was literally superhuman.

The uneasy truces she'd brokered between various deities were all holding steady enough. She'd also already helped most of the major ones through the integration of their divided personalities. In addition, she'd done her best to prepare them for any further drift that might occur thanks to the growing American awareness of their existence, as the inevitable differences in opinion and viewpoint resulting from that would probably continue to affect their aspects.

She was owed a lot of favours, from people in very lofty places. There was no need to call them in yet, but she wasn't likely to forget what she was owed. Having powerful people owe one favours was a very useful tool, even just as leverage in an argument or negotiation.

All told, she'd saved quite a few lives and preserved peace and earned an armload of accomplishments, and that was more than enough for any twenty-three-year-old to be satisfied with for the time being. She'd been very busy for the past seven years, and she was in dire need of a vacation and a half.

So, she was going to take the year off.

There were a few protests, of course. She'd made herself somewhat indispensable to some, but she was still mostly a human being, and she needed to take a vacation more than they needed her to stay and keep the peace.

Now she stood on the tarmac ten feet from the love of her life, admiring it.

It had been a gift from her father on her nineteenth birthday, perhaps by way of apology for all the time he hadn't spent with her when she was growing up. She had long since forgiven him for that, but the gift... certainly hadn't hurt.

She'd paid for her own training and licensing fees out of the sporadic income she earned from amateur modelling work — she still thought she made a terrible model, but the camera and her wallet disagreed — and then spent her two years in flight school visiting it and staring at it in desperate yearning before actually being able to do anything with it. They'd been worth it. Her first flight... well. It was one of her most precious memories of all time. Top three, for sure.

The love of her life was a series seven Denney Kitfox, painted hunter green with cream racing stripes. She'd spent those two years she couldn't fly it getting all her friends with any facility in the magic area to enchant it down to its very nuts and bolts: enchantments for true flight, greater speed, unsinkability, gentle landings, one to make its trunk bigger on the inside, another to dim the roar of the wind and engine so she could play music in flight and actually hear it. The paint was enchanted. The upholstery was enchanted. The whole lovely thing was drenched in magic, and this would be a new test for it; she'd flown it across the continent many, many times while setting up the exchange program, but never across a major ocean.

She wasn't worried. It had never, ever let her down, and she was rigorous about its maintenance, to the point where her friends joked that it was almost like a religion for her. Honestly, she found it hard to argue: she had an object of worship, weekly rituals, and endless faith; all the necessary ingredients. She even had conversations with it, sometimes, when she'd been alone with it long enough, and sometimes when she was actively trying to imbue it with a soul of its own. So they weren't far from right, if one looked at it from the right angle.

Certainly she had more faith in and love for the little plane than she had for most of the actual, real-life gods she knew.

The matte runway framed its reflective surfaces nicely, and the white June sunlight made it sparkle. Its angled lines made it look like it was staring skyward with great yearning. Piper knew that feeling very well.

She wouldn't be the first to fly a Kitfox intercontinentally, but it would be easier for her than it had been for Michel Gordillo, since he'd been flying an earlier model without the benefit of godly blessings — as far as she knew, anyway. The list of demigods Hazel and Frank were compiling was still far from complete, and might never see true completion, since so many demigods lost their magic and became nearly mundane in their adulthood. Gordillo may well have been her godly elder brother, and she might never know. In any case, she was looking forward to being the second to make the attempt, even though it wouldn't give her much in the way of bragging rights.

The flight plan she'd registered listed an airfield in Iceland as her destination, but she doubted she would stop there. There was lots of cool stuff to see in Iceland, to be sure, but she had a whole year. It might be cool to circumnavigate the globe. It wasn't the accomplishment it had once been, but it would still be fun to be able to say she'd done it.

Leo stepped up beside her and clapped her on the back.

Adulthood hadn't changed him much. Same wiry figure, same curly hair, same crooked, lovely smile. Same boring fashion sense. Since learning to appreciate fashion a little herself, Piper had tried to talk him into more flattering things on occasion, but he insisted on his perpetually stained white shirts and khaki overalls and ancient jeans, and firmly so. When she thought about it, her motivation faltered anyway; he spent so much time in the workshop surrounded by grease, good clothes would be wasted on him.

Besides, she wasn't looking much the fashionista today anyway; she was wearing jeans, too, and a red plaid button-down with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Her hair had recently been cut into a fashionable sharp-edged bob, but today she'd just braided the edges back to keep it out of her face and left the rest to hang in a shaggy mop to the nape of her neck.

They looked almost like siblings.

"Send postcards. And souvenirs. And, uh."

"I know," she said, affectionately bumping his shoulder with her own. "If I see Calypso I'll let her know you say hi."

He grinned at her, but it was a little hollow. He'd been busy for the last seven years, too, tinkering with the dulled bit of crystal Calypso had given him from the wall of her home and with his own gadgetry, trying to find a combination that would lead him back to Ogygia's shores. He had promised, after all. Sworn on the River Styx and everything. Piper was pretty sure that the infatuation that had first prompted him to make the oath had faded, but she was also pretty sure that even if breaking an oath on the Styx had no consequences at all, he would continue to try and keep the promise anyway. He would keep trying until something worked, or he died.

In the meantime, he had the garage, and plenty of occasionally magical engineering projects to keep him busy and well paid. If he sometimes took a few extra days off on a weekend and sailed out into the Atlantic on Percy's ship for a week, if sometimes he secluded himself in the workshop and talked to nobody for days, if sometimes he had dark circles under his eyes like he'd been missing sleep or crying or both... well, nobody gave him crap about it. Piper least of all.

She'd been flying internationally a lot since she appointed herself Mediator for the Gods, and so somehow they'd wound up with that inside joke between them.

A joke, because they both knew the gods only ever sent male heroes to torment the goddess in exile, and Piper was many things to many people but that wasn't one of them. A joke, because Leo had to find a way to laugh about the things that hurt him or he couldn't handle them for long. A joke, because it was too heavy to be serious about long-term.

She ruffled a hand through his wild curls and pulled him in for a long, close hug. "Don't worry, I'll write all the time. And it's only a year. I'll be back before you know it, kiddo."

Another inside joke. She'd had a late growth spurt, and had three or four inches on him now. She'd stopped a few inches shy of six feet, and was taller than every girl she knew except Annabeth, while Leo was shorter than every one of his male friends. He took their ribbing good-naturedly, and Piper thought he might actually like it when she drew attention to their height difference and called him by affectionate nicknames, though he had... other reasons for it.

Neither of them had much in the way of family. Leo's father and her mother had been necessarily absent for most of their lives. Leo had lost his mother to the fire, of course, and she'd half-lost hers to his career. What bridges could be mended had been by now, but they still didn't think of their living parents as people who could be relied on for much in the way of support.

So, over their years of friendship and tramping through various perils together, they'd come to some silent but mutual agreement and adopted each other as ersatz siblings. They made a point of never talking about it out loud, as if they might jinx it if they did.

They just had their inside jokes, and affectionate hugs, and when things went pear-shaped, they called each other first.

"You'd better," he said with mock severity. "Or else."

"Promise."

"Okay. Don't forget to keep your cell charged."

"Right, yeah. Speaking of that: when Nico comes back, give me a call, okay? I'm still mad that they sent him alone, and I'll rest easier when I know he's okay."

Leo nodded glumly. "Will do."

He would've gone with Nico in a heartbeat, as would half a dozen other people, but Nico hated taking other people to the underworld, let alone the really harrowing deeps he'd headed down to this time. A missing goddess was a big enough deal to warrant an entourage normally, but he was really the only person at all qualified to carry out the investigation — except for maybe Hazel, but she'd always avoided the underworld for the most part and didn't know her way around like he did. He'd insisted he would be fine, and everyone had had little choice but to take his word for it and cross their fingers.

Demigod lives were always dangerous anyway.

"Thanks. Any other words of caution?"

"Nah. Have fun."

"You bet," she said, giving him one last affectionate squeeze. "Okay, I'm off. See you in a year."

Piper boosted herself into the comfortable cockpit, checking the arrangement of her baggage a third time to make sure nothing would go flying if she changed speeds too quickly. The trip wouldn't take her as long as it should, thanks to all the enchantments— around eighteen hours, instead of nearly two days — but it would still be a long trip, and she'd rather not deal with a badly packed trunk at twenty-five thousand feet.

"Safe travels!" Leo yelled. He'd prudently backed away to a safe distance, and stood at the edge of the tarmac with a broad grin.

She waved and winked at him cheerily, then closed the door and went through the second half of her pre-flight checklist. When at last she was satisfied, she fired it up and tore away down the long road and up into the clear June sky. The Kitfox seemed overjoyed to be in flight, and so was she. The weather was perfect, the winds felt kind, and she had twelve entire months of freedom and adventure ahead waiting for her.

It was going to be a good year.

 **X**

 **A/N** : Things to thank Radycat for in this chapter:

\- Piper's outfit  
\- the briefly mentioned Nico subplot


	2. CASTAWAY

**Chapter 2:** CASTAWAY

Piper woke from a midflight half-doze to a nameless feeling of... difference.

The instruments all agreed that everything was fine. The sky was calm and clear around her, a vast dome of wind and stars and scudding mare's tails, cradling her and her little craft in its temporarily benevolent hands. It was close to three in the morning, and she was about six hours out from Iceland. Essentially still in the middle of nowhere. The sea below was a tranquil sheet of dulled silver in the open moonlight, flawless and uninterrupted.

Everything was perfect, but something was wrong.

The feeling intensified, and she furrowed her brow, searching the instruments again.

An anomaly: she'd dropped quite a ways since she'd first checked the instruments a few seconds ago. Much farther than she should have in so short a period of time, even allowing for the ordinary fluctuations of flying in a plane this small. As she watched, the altimeter needle shuddered and slid a few notches lower. Her pitch wasn't off, she shouldn't be sinking, _why_ was she sinking—

Suddenly, the Kitfox yawed southwards, rolling unpleasantly so that she had to brace herself on her right elbow. The roll levelled out eventually, but the yaw remained, a steady rightwards drift sending her around in lazy circles like she was gliding on a thermal somehow. Only it couldn't be that, because thermals only occurred over landmasses, and didn't work like that anyway.

The Kitfox spiralled like a bewildered eagle, ever downwards, and nothing she did altered its course a jot.

Worried in earnest now, she reached out and tried to wheedle the winds into helping her. Her charmspeak ability had grown a great deal over the years, and she could persuade most things with even the barest beginnings of a soul to talk to her, but these winds ignored her as if they couldn't hear her. As if she wasn't even there. She always made a point of giving whoever and whatever she talked to enough room to honestly choose for themselves, so she was used to being told no, but she was _not_ used to being outright ignored, or to going unnoticed. She didn't like it much.

She liked it even less when her navigational display suddenly flickered and went dark. She stared at it for a few seconds, disbelieving. Out of control, and now lost? She had only the vaguest idea where she was — a few hundred miles south of her destination, the middle of freaking nowhere — and absolutely no way to find her course to the airfield in Iceland.

Piper grimly prepared for an emergency water landing, checking every necessary element three times and taking a few deep, determined breaths. She'd never had to ditch before, since she'd never flown over a body of water this large, and the Kitfox was ordinarily so reliable.

Then she cut the engine.

At this altitude, she'd never get it going again in time to regain enough height anyway, even if the mysterious power forcing her along this strange helical course suddenly let her go for whatever reason. If she was going to have to ditch, it would be much safer to do it without the engine burning and the propellers spinning. The Kitfox was a good glider, it would carry on until the ground caught it.

The last few minutes were tense. Piper was good under pressure, and managed to keep it together, but only barely. The dark sea loomed up at her, glinting cruelly, then abruptly closed over her and the plane both. The impact was hard, throwing her painfully about, but the cockpit maintained its integrity and the plane surged back atop the water after a brief but terrifying darkness. She waited until the worst of the rolling and pitching was over, then cautiously dug out her flashlight and shone it around.

She looked the plane over first. It wasn't damaged beyond repair, she didn't think, but she wasn't going to get it back into the air again anytime soon. The impact had snapped one of the propeller blades and badly warped the other, there was steam seeping out here and there, and the nose was looking a little crumpled. It wasn't going to explode, and it probably only needed a few replacement parts, but she wasn't going to find them all the way out here.

The witching-hour sea around her was low and quiet. Here and there it swelled into gentle waves, none nearly high or steep enough to crest. A soft easterly wind blew cool and damp across her face, gentle with the promise of full summer. Overhead, the moon had set, and the stars were brilliant in its absence. There was an enormous sense of space and silence all around her.

It was a lovely night, really, and the feeling of total solitude was overwhelming but not entirely unpleasant.

She just had no idea what to do. There would be some kind of alert in a few hours when she didn't show up on schedule in Iceland, probably, but until then... what to do? Her radio gave her nothing but static, her cell phone naturally had no service, and she couldn't send an Iris message. She could only hope her GPS locator was still functioning and would tell them where to find her. It wasn't easy to reach from the cockpit, being centrally located in order to protect it in the event of... well, this.

Piper pulled herself back in, shut the door, and tried to get comfortable. If she was lucky, they would find her within the day. If not... she had brought some provisions, just in case, but not enough to last more than a week even if she stretched them. She could try to fish, but all the skills her cousins had taught her had been meant for rivers, and required equipment she did not have. Resourceful as she was, she could probably figure something out if it got desperate, but she sincerely hoped it wouldn't. Besides, she hated fish.

Briefly, she wished she'd thought to get the Horn of Plenty back from Hazel. She'd lent it to her for a quest in the far north a year ago and had asked her to keep it safe when she got back, not needing it herself. Hazel's house was the safest place for magical artifacts Piper knew of. Hidden, well-defended, and well cared for.

She couldn't have known she'd have need of it so soon. Still, she regretted that pretty bitterly at the moment.

Normally, once the sun came up, she might've been able to generate a big enough mist prism to get an Iris message through, but even if Iris had been on the job she'd still need to know exactly where she was to tell them anything useful. She pictured herself trying to describe her location by what she saw around her, and snickered softly. There were no easy landmarks in the middle of the sea. Maybe she could determine her position by the stars, as Thalia had tried to teach her, but not very accurately, and she wouldn't have any idea how to translate it to something that would be meaningful to her friends.

There really wasn't much to do but kick back and wait. So Piper kicked back, dug some snacks out of the trunk, looked out across the hypnotic tranquillity of the night sea, and waited. At least she wasn't prone to motion sickness.

Eventually, she fell asleep.

x

An alarming grinding sound woke her up a while later. The sun was fully up, a good fifteen degrees above the horizon already. She estimated she'd slept for about four hours, give or take, right through the sunrise. A pity; it had probably been beautiful. The sky was almost clear but for a tumbled shawl of disorganized nimbus clouds to the south, and the air was sharp. The sunrise would have given the seascape a soft, pastel edge, a dreamy sense of unreality. She could picture it almost as clearly as if she'd seen it. If only she'd been awake.

Maybe she'd needed the sleep, she allowed. A crash was a fairly traumatic experience even when it went well, as hers had, after all.

She sat up and looked around, yawning, and raised her eyebrows.

Outside the windows of her little craft, an incongruously pastoral landscape of rolling hills unfolded into the distance. The hills were studded irregularly with evergreen trees, and the swards of grass between them were stained with wildflowers and as green as the heart of life itself. There was no wind. Cranking her neck around to look behind, she saw a flat pane of water, disturbed only occasionally by sluggish ripples. The air was sweet with grass and cedar, and she couldn't detect even a hint of salt.

She knew where she was. If it could be said that "here" was anywhere at all.

Her ropes and stakes were all the way at the back of the trunk, since she hadn't expected to need them. It took a few minutes of awkward contortionism and digging to extract them. When she had them in hand, she hopped out into knee-deep water that was neither warm nor cold, but some twilight temperature between them that would probably make for comfortable but refreshing swimming, if one were so inclined.

The shore she'd beached on was grey and jagged, and it was fairly easy to find a stone big enough and rooted enough to suit her purpose. She looped the rope around it a couple of times, then staked it down with a tidy knot. She'd need a little help to pull the plane ashore, but hopefully she'd have that soon enough.

As she'd hoped, when she straightened up to look, there was a small figure coming over the hills and down to meet her. Piper waited, fighting down a muddle of unhelpful emotions.

She was excited, of course. She'd spent ten years listening to Leo's stories, and Percy's, imagining herself meeting the person who was coming down the grass towards her now. Neither of them were great storytellers, but it seemed they'd managed to get the gist of things across. Ogygia was mostly as she'd pictured it. It was about two or three square miles in area, she estimated, with an uneven coastline that probably had many beaches of both sand and stone. It was covered in hills and trees and meadows. A quiet and idyllic place that felt almost too perfect to be real. Beautiful from treetop to stony root.

As excited as she was to be seeing this place of myth and legend with her own eyes, she also felt obscurely guilty. It should be Leo here, not her. What could _she_ do to help Calypso? He was the one with all the ideas and all the gadgets and all the plans. He was the one with the unbreakable oath and the reason to keep it. She was just on vacation to Iceland, with nothing but what she could fit in her Kitfox's tiny trunk. She was so totally under-equipped for this.

On top of that, she didn't even have any good news to tell her. Percy and Leo had tried many times to convince Zeus to break the curse, but despite the pardon Percy had wrestled out of him all those years ago, he still refused. Calypso had her pardon, but Percy hadn't asked for her _freedom_ , and that was a thick enough hair for Zeus to split when it came to someone he still regarded as an enemy. Piper had tried a few times herself, but Zeus was not one of the gods who owed her a big enough favour for this.

Some of the other gods had made suggestions, too, she knew, but they never bothered to get together and ask en masse, which would be much harder to refuse. Herding gods was much more difficult than herding cats.

Worst of all, honestly, Calypso hadn't been at the top of anyone's priority list, except for maybe Leo's. The rest thought about her now and then, and put in a good word when they could, but it wasn't enough. Not when the opponent was the notoriously stubborn Zeus and his long memory for grudges.

Calypso stopped ten feet short of her, stumbling to a startled, wide-eyed halt.

Piper stared back at her.

As a daughter of Aphrodite, she knew beauty like her own backyard, and this woman was so beautiful she made Piper wonder if the all the words she knew for beauty had been invented just to describe her.

Here, the stories fell short.

Calypso was about Leo's height — three or four inches shorter than her — and dressed incongruously in jeans and a plain white top, and about Piper's age. There must be a little shapeshifting magic going on there, Piper figured, since Leo and Percy had both reported a girl about _their_ age. That wasn't strange to her; Aphrodite appeared to people as a manifested ideal, as whatever those looking upon her would appreciate best. Piper herself had it on good word that her own eyes changed colour according to the lighting and her mood. Shifting ages wasn't that strange.

Beyond that, the rest was just as they had said, but somehow immeasurably more.

Calypso had long hair, which had been accurately described for Piper a long time ago as "caramel-coloured." There was really no other word she could think of for it: it was a very, very soft shade of ruddy brown, simultaneously pale and yet very rich in colour. The early summer sunlight lay across it where it spilled over Calypso's left shoulder, making it shine everywhere it bent and curved. Her eyes were wide and dark and almost frighteningly deep. A soft spray of freckles adorned her deep golden skin.

Leo had told her once, very quietly, that he had thought her more beautiful than Aphrodite herself, and Piper finally understood how that was possible. Aphrodite's beauty was all about the onlooker, what they wanted and what they expected to see when they were looking at the most beautiful woman in the world. It was, in a sense, performance art. _Good_ performance art, of course; Aphrodite deserved her names and titles, Piper would never contest that.

She'd grudgingly learned over the years to respect the art of creating beauty, and no longer sneered at lipstick or blow-dryers or fashion magazines. There were many ways to be beautiful, and no shame in its pursuit. Performance arts of every kind required skill, and skill was something worth admiring.

Calypso, though, needed none of it. She was only what she was. There was no artifice to her, no performance, no desire to please at all. Her beauty wasn't something that left room for respect, or for the lack of it. It was as solid and real as the stones of her island home, and as incontrovertible, as inarguable.

Piper's breath was coming and going very unevenly, she realized, and it was only just now occurring to her to try and read Calypso's expression, when that was usually the very first thing she focused on.

Calypso looked deeply unhappy, and maybe angry, and a few other things too. Piper was very good at reading faces — it was kind of a vital skill for any mediator or aspiring diplomat — but there was so much going on there that she felt like she was barely scratching the surface.

"A woman," Calypso was saying to herself. Her voice was melodic, high but soft around the edges. It suited her. "A _woman?_ "

"All my life," Piper said drily.

Calypso's eyes snapped up to meet hers, and the world narrowed alarmingly. They were so deep, so dark, it was like staring into a starless midnight sky: endless, lightless, almost inhuman. Piper wondered what the boys had seen, because they had only said her eyes were "dark," and described her as otherwise normal.

There was nothing remotely normal about Calypso to Piper's eyes.

"A _woman_ ," Calypso repeated, and this time it was a bizarre mix of disgust, fury, and wonder.

Whatever Piper had imagined about finally meeting Calypso, this wasn't really it. She had imagined Leo bringing Calypso back to the mainland on Percy's ship, and she had imagined showing Calypso around, enjoying her exclamations of disbelief over laptops and skyscrapers. She had imagined Ogygia's borders opening at long last, and going to meet her there, and Calypso being gracious and excited at the possibility of a female friend for the first time in three thousand years.

She'd never really imagined coming her to like the others, a hero meant to break Calypso's heart. She'd never imagined Calypso staring at her with alien eyes, cold and angry. She'd never imagined any of this.

"Hi. My name is Piper," she offered, for lack of anything better to say. She couldn't seem to think straight.

Calypso stared at her, raked her up and down with those dark, dark eyes. It felt like being in front of a new photographer's lens, one who didn't like what they were seeing.

"A woman," Calypso said, sounding suddenly lifeless, like all hope had gone out of her.

"A woman," Piper agreed.

Calypso tipped her head back and sucked in a long breath, and let it out very, very slowly. Her throat worked. A thin furrow appeared between her brows, and she looked at Piper again. "No," she said at last, shaking her head very slightly but very firmly and taking a step back. "No. Not this."

Then she clenched her teeth, turned on her heel and _left_ , walking back over the hills with a straight back and white-knuckled fists.

Piper couldn't find her voice, somehow, and couldn't move either. She could only watch, dumbfounded, as Calypso left her standing alone on the grey beach with the wreckage of her plans for the year tilting gently on the water behind her.

She should've known better than to expect her year off to go so smoothly. She was a demigod.

 **X**


	3. SURVIVOR

**Chapter 3:** SURVIVOR

The worst thing one could do when faced with a guarded, recalcitrant opponent was push and make demands, so Piper did the wisest thing she could do under the circumstances and stayed away.

Scouting up and down the shore, she eventually found a spot that was relatively flat and free of large stones. Beyond it to the north, a large line of black stones stretched out northwards into the lake like a skeletal finger, and trying to pull the plane around that would be impractical and dangerous anyway. Hauling it across the water by its anchor rope was slow going, but doable. Getting it from there onto the shore at her chosen campsite should have been much more difficult.

The moment its wheels hit the silty lakebed, however, the burden became inexplicably lighter. She hauled it ashore with little more effort than she'd spent pulling it across the water, as if she had several extra pairs of hands helping her. There was no one obviously present, and the whole island was so saturated with magic that she couldn't even begin to pick out any subtle effects that might be helping her.

It took her an hour to remember the air spirits Leo had told her about.

Turning towards the water just in case, she allowed herself a small smile. Calypso might have her reasons to reject Piper's presence, but it seemed she wasn't an entirely inhospitable host.

Once she had the Kitfox arranged on the grass above the beach to her satisfaction, she pulled every tarp she had out of the trunk, as well as every rope and stake. She tossed the largest of the obnoxiously orange tarps over the wings of the plane and tacked them down, then wrapped the smaller ones around the nose and tail areas to cut the wind. When she was finished, she had a serviceable — if oddly shaped — semblance of a tent. She stowed her provisions and various other useful things under the left wing, then crawled under the plane's belly and set her bedroll up under the right wing.

Years of suffering through crisis after crisis had taught her a few valuable things. Number one: if caught in a situation without a foreseeable end or way out, it was best to establish a base of operations first and work from there. It was amazing what the mere act of creating a temporary home could do when it came to calming her fears and encouraging hope. She always felt much more prepared to face whatever was coming next if she had a place to retreat to.

When she was as comfortably established as she could make herself, she settled into her bedroll and ate a few more of her snacks. Tomorrow, she would see about finding a serviceable fishing rod among the branches of the nearby trees — she was vegetarian for various reasons, but none of them were a hard and fast objection to the consumption of meat itself, and considering this was a question of survival, that wasn't a hill she'd choose to die on — and see if there were any edible plants she recognized on the island that weren't growing in Calypso's gardens.

First things first: she would survive.

Then she would see what she could do about Calypso.

x

She dreamed about Jason, ridiculously enough.

Her false memories had slowly faded over the years and eventually become one-dimensional enough to recognize for what they were, and her short-lived relationship with him had not given her all that much to miss. Even so, it was said that people dreamed primarily about their day-to-day lives and what they knew, and that was true for Piper. Even with the strange new situation to cope with, even with all the intervening years between the quiet death of that brief love and now, her brain seemed to think it was the perfect time to dwell on something totally irrelevant, and she could hardly stop it in her sleep.

So she dreamed about Jason, and the school rooftop, and the first kiss that never happened.

She'd really loved him. She still did, in a way, even if it wasn't the happily-ever-after kind of way. She was fairly sure that if she crooked her finger the right way he'd still come running. He'd found other things worth caring about, other people, but she couldn't shake the certainty that since she'd claimed him as her own he would never really be free. If they'd been wholly human, it would have been easier, but they weren't. Demigods were capable of strange things, and Piper's mother was the goddess of love. It wasn't much of a stretch.

In the dream, she kissed Jason on a rooftop under a glittering canopy of springtime stars, and he loved her, and she loved him, and everything was very simple.

When she woke up, it was raining, and she was alone.

x

Her first order of business was a fishing rod.

Wood wasn't the best material for it, and if she had to use it, bamboo would be ideal, but she wasn't likely to find it here. What she needed was a supple branch with good tensile strength and a decent grip. Coniferous trees were good at the third thing, but not so much at the second, which was more important.

From the shore, she'd only seen evergreens — cedar, juniper, cypress — but as she cautiously explored further in, keeping north to avoid the path Calypso had taken, she found the occasional stand of oak and beech and even birch, the last of which reminded her oddly of home. She cut a few switches from new growth near the bottom, but they quickly proved to be much too short and weak.

Climbing trees had never been a real hobby of hers, but she'd bother to learn a long time ago, if only to get some time to herself somewhere where no one could reach her. She was thankful for that now, as she shinnied up the bare lower trunk of a young oak. Once she reached the main upwards sweep of its branches, it became much easier, and she lithely scampered up to near the top, where the branches were about ten feet long and two inches in diameter. She cut a notch in one near the trunk, then carefully shuffled down to a lower branch and gave it a hard yank downwards. It cracked and splintered, and a few more minutes with her heavy knife finished the job.

She descended the trunk slowly, pulling it after her and cutting away the smaller twigs when they tangled in the other branches.

At the bottom, she sat and rested with her back against the tree and pruned the remaining twigs off it until she had a bare ten-foot pole. Then she just sat for a while, letting Ogygia sink into her skin.

It was a strange place, even beyond the magic. Three thousand years of inhabitation and enchantment had given it something like a soul, though it was mute and seemed relatively mindless. She tried talking to it, but it didn't understand her. It just saw her, and watched her, and was aware of her on levels she couldn't fully understand.

It was alive. That much she knew for sure.

There were several spools of fishing line stowed away in her emergency packs. She hadn't expected to actually use them for fishing, though there were hooks and a couple of baits packed near them in the box. Fishing line was just very light and very strong, useful for many purposes beyond its name.

When she had it all put together, she returned to the long northern line of rocks and made her way out to the far end. The penultimate stone was almost flat on top, just tilted a little westwards. She ensconced herself, cast her line, and waited.

She chewed her way through a few more of her snacks while waiting for something to bite. They wouldn't last long at the rate she was going through them, but she somehow couldn't bring herself to feel that worried. Ogygia was such a gentle place, and Calypso's servants had helped her. She found it hard to believe she would really starve.

Even so, it was always best to help one's self rather than waiting for outside assistance if one could, and she could.

Piper sat through the afternoon on the grey stone with her line in the water. She caught a couple fish, miraculously, but none were longer than six inches. They'd make a dinner and not much else. She'd have to find a better spot, get better bait, or resort to charmspeaking them, which would sit badly with her. Her extended family had taught her a lot of things about hunting and the way of things, and it didn't feel right to give the fish no chance to choose otherwise or escape.

Gathering fallen branches for a campfire only took about half an hour, but by the time she had it lit and stoked, she realized she was exhausted. It felt silly to her — she'd hardly done anything, just climbed a tree and sat around staring at the water for a few hours — but silly or not, she couldn't deny the weariness sinking into her muscles.

She'd get used to it, she reassured herself. It was only tiring because it was new and unwelcome. Once she knew what she was doing, once she knew where to go to find the fish and how to move the lure to entice them, once she'd scoped out the area for edible plants and knew where to find them and how much food she could count on, it would get easier. People had survived for a long, long time with much less than she'd been given here. She'd make do. She'd adapt.

All the same, she went to bed barely half an hour after the sun went down, and slept until well after it rose.

x

The island was fruitful, she discovered over the next few days. She stayed well north of Calypso's cave and gardens, though she learned where they were. The northern part of the island was big enough, though, and she found that Calypso's garden had spread its seeds into the hollows and dells of the wilder parts of the island. She found potatoes growing wild, and oregano and dill and a couple of other herbs, and even a small, hidden bed of mixed lettuce and cauliflower. Enough to live on for a while.

She spent an hour or two digging and lining a proper fire-pit; it wouldn't do to send Ogygia up in flames. The plane-tent had proven to have a few drafty spots, and she reinforced those with improvised stakes and mats whittled down from cypress branches. Harvested bundles of last year's long grasses softened her bedroll considerably. A few fallen branches lashed together provided a decent drying rack for any extra fish she managed to catch.

By the time a week had passed, Piper was feeling quite comfortable and optimistic. Winter might be a problem, depending on what latitude's weather the island chose to adopt, but she was already managing to set aside some drying fish and herbs, and potatoes could keep for quite a long time if she treated them right.

She would survive.

x

A few days later, Piper emerged from her tent shortly after dawn to find a cloth-draped platter sitting politely on the ground a few feet away. She lifted the cloth gingerly, and found a few rolls of bread, a quarter round of cheese, a handful of red grapes on the vine, and a still-warm bowl of vegetable stew.

"Thank you," she said out loud, though she had no idea if Calypso was listening or not.

She'd gotten used to being a little hungry all the time, and really filling herself up felt indescribably good. After she'd stuffed herself all the way to the corners, she neatly arranged the platter and left it where she'd found it, then wandered up to the northern line of stones she'd mentally nicknamed the Finger to fish for a while.

When she came back, the platter from the morning was gone, but a new and larger one was sitting in its place. There was more stew and bread, and a lump of casserole that seemed to contain a number of interesting vegetables.

Piper wondered how Calypso had known she preferred vegetarian fare, or if it was just a coincidence. Either way, she was grateful, and said so out loud again just in case her reluctant hostess was listening after all.

The stew was delicious, rich and thick and flavoured with shredded herbs and a number of spices. There were dumplings made of something that looked like creamed wheat floating in it, and they were very filling, so much so that Piper couldn't even finish what she'd been given.

She slept better that night than she had since she'd landed.

x

Her second order of business was finding out how well the news of her disappearance had gone over. She couldn't do much about it, since she still had no way of contacting anyone, but she wanted to know anyway.

It had been a little over a week since she'd landed. Long enough that the search party had probably given up.

She pulled Katoptris out of the trunk and sat down one of the beach's many rocks just outside her campsite. The blade flickered dully as she slipped its black leather sheath off and held it up to the sunlight.

It didn't always do what she told it, but it had gotten more cooperative over the years about showing her things that were actually relevant to her in the moment. So it started with Nico, a tiny dark figure picking his way through a jagged, high-roofed cavern full of what looked like smeared green foxfire. The underworld. He wasn't back yet, then, which meant nobody knew if she was alive or dead. She bit her lip.

The image flickered briefly lower, down through the ancient, lightless layers of stone to a hollowed out lair where a hunched, glittering thing leaned over a dark heap of bedding. She didn't know what that was, and didn't care to guess.

Katoptris flashed to the overworld next. Leo was shouting at Percy, who looked angry and guilty and miserable all at once. The blade couldn't carry sound; she had no idea what the argument was about, though she'd wager it had something to do with her. Jason had his hand on Percy's shoulder, but he looked guilty and miserable too, and he wasn't stopping them.

Hazel was sitting at her kitchen table in the mountain house, hands hovering over an enormous map with the Atlantic centered on it. Divining, probably; she'd never been much good at that particular variety of witchcraft, but she was clearly trying her best. Frank wandered in with a glass of water and put it down somewhere on the state of New York. Hazel smiled, but kept her eyes on the map.

Flash. Aphrodite, in one of the new Olympian sanctums built by Annabeth. A number of other gods were ranged around her — Hermes, Dionysus, Hestia, Poseidon himself. Her apparent mood was something of a sharp right turn from what Piper had seen so far: animated, forceful. A smug smiled played around the corners of her mouth. Clearly, she either wasn't worried or she was doing a very careful job of hiding it. The gods around her were frowning, but nodding reluctantly.

Before Piper could analyze that any better, it flashed again.

Her father, head in his hands and knees drawn up to his chest, sitting on his bed and taking long, deliberate breaths. Piper's heart twisted. Nico was always a little hard to find, but he was seldom completely out of reach, and now was the absolute worst time for it. Without him, nobody could tell her father that she wasn't among the dead. He looked like he was trying to convince himself to hold onto hope, but having a hard time of it. She wanted nothing more than to put her arms around his broad shoulders and reassure him, but will alone couldn't bridge the gap.

Shutting her eyes briefly to compose herself, she sheathed the dagger and let out a long breath.

Hopefully, Nico would return soon. Ideally, Nico would return soon with Iris of the rainbow intact and in tow, ready to return to work. Piper almost felt like the world was conspiring against her. No Horn, no Nico, no Iris, no frigging cell phone coverage, nothing.

Nothing to do but wait for something to change.

x

Five days later, she emerged to find Calypso standing twenty paces away, looking extremely uncomfortable and grumpy.

"Uh, hi," Piper said. "Thanks for all the food, it was really good."

Calypso nodded shortly to acknowledge that. "There's a storm coming," she said.

Piper nodded. "I know," she said. She'd felt it coming for almost two days now. She wasn't sure how; Ogygia seemed to decide what weather it wanted to have based on criteria she had no way of knowing, but the storm was big enough that she'd smelled it coming. Anyone would have. Drew Tanaka would have felt it coming, and Drew was the least naturally attuned person Piper knew.

"Your... shelter... won't protect you," Calypso said.

"Nope, probably not," Piper said pragmatically. "It'll get pretty wet and chilly, but it's almost summer, I won't die."

Calypso struggled with whatever she was planning to say next, long enough that Piper could almost pick out each individual battle. It was an entire war, not just a skirmish. Calypso had a dozen reasons to turn around and leave her where she was without saying another word, and she was fighting through them all to get the next sentence out, and Piper appreciated that. Whatever she was going to say, Piper did appreciate that it was costing her to say it.

"Until the storm passes," Calypso said at last, "you should take shelter in my cave."

Piper had been right to respect the struggle, she realized. She still didn't know why Calypso was rejecting her so hard, but she was inclined to assume it was for good reasons, knowing people and gods and Calypso's story as well as she did. Neither people nor gods just put their foot down when they'd previously been lenient without any provocation at all.

"Thank you," Piper said honestly. "That would be great. I'll leave you alone as soon as it's done, don't worry. I'm not here to make trouble for you."

Calypso barked out a short, ugly laugh, by far the ugliest thing Piper had seen from her so far.

"Yes, you are," she said. "Even so, I can't help it. I never can."

Piper winced, but opted to save the rest of that discussion for the hours they were about to spend cooped up in the same little cave together. They'd need something to pass the time then anyway. "Sorry," she muttered, and then ducked into her plane-tent to gather up her bedding and a few essentials.

When she had them, she packed the remainder away into the trunk, rolled up the tarps and stuffed them in after it, and then turned the plane so its tail was to the wind and tied it down as hard as she could. By the time she was done, it was criss-crossed with ropes from every angle. It would probably manage to pull a few of the stakes, but she could only hope it wouldn't pull enough to go tumbling into the lake when the wind hit its peak. If it sank, she'd need more strength than she had to get it out again.

When at last she turned to leave, Calypso was halfway up the hill already, fists jammed into the tight pockets of her incongruous jeans. Piper watched her for a few moments, noting the grace of her gait despite the uncomfortable rigidity of her spine.

Then she followed after, slowly, arriving a good five minutes later to give Calypso time to brace for the invasion.

The sky darkened as she walked, and she knew she was cutting it pretty close. This wasn't the kind of storm that built itself up first and then wandered across the sky to its destination. It was the kind that came practically out of nowhere, a sudden coalescence of sound and fury. She knew the type. They were very often magically instigated, after all.

The first drops of cold rain fell even as she ducked under the overhang of the cave's unassuming entrance.

Inside, it was much as the boys had described it to her. An austere white curtain blocked off the back third of the long, elliptical cavern. Calypso's bed would be back there, Piper knew. A hearty fire blazed in a deep hearth carved into the left wall. Almost directly opposite from it, a beautiful loom stood, and in a niche of its own closer to the door there was a lovely wooden harp with pale strings. A table sat in the middle between them, laden at one end with bowls of fruit. A number of smaller cupboards were carved into the walls and curtained with little white hangings, and Piper could see glimpses of breads and cheeses and sacks of grain through them.

The roof was the real star, though. The walls glittered proudly, but the ceiling was like the magnified innards of a quartz geode. Some of the points were nearly three feet long, protruding from the roof like blocky, transparent blades. Most of them were clear and ice-white, but some of them were pale green or deep purple with fluorite or amethyst encroachments. It was a crystalline labyrinth, a forest of sly mirrors, and Piper found it hard to keep her eyes from wandering back to it.

"If you're hungry, you can help yourself to the stew and whatever's on the table," Calypso said, interrupting her reverie. "I'll ask you not to touch the loom or harp, though."

"Sure thing," Piper said.

Calypso pulled the large curtain aside, revealing her small bedchamber. A pillowy white bed sat squat and lush to the right, and a natural stone ledge to the left held a comb, a yellow sponge, and an abrasive bit of pinkish stone. There was no mirror.

"You can sleep there for tonight," Calypso said, pointing to the floor beneath the ledge.

Piper nodded, and dropped her bedding where Calypso had pointed, arranging it into a tidy bedroll. It wouldn't be as comfortable as the soft sandy ground by the shore, but it would save her from the wind and wet, and that was enough.

It was still barely noon, though, and she wasn't even slightly sleepy yet.

She occupied herself for half an hour or so with having lunch, but she could only eat so slowly, and didn't even have the option of taking the dishes out to be washed. The moment she thought of it, they floated up from her palms and out into the open hair, heading down the long meadow towards the southern shore. The air spirits didn't mind getting wet, it seemed.

Calypso, meanwhile, had sat down at her loom with a stiff back and set about weaving something Piper couldn't identify on sight.

The silence was murderously sharp.

Piper had learned a great deal of patience through her years of practice mediating between the gods, but even she had her limits, and she was fast reaching them. She was sure Calypso had her reasons, but it was hard on her to not even be told what they were, to just be expected to meekly accept it. She'd given Calypso plenty of room to get comfortable and make the first move, but she hadn't, and the situation wasn't really tenable as it was. Piper would have to do something or say something eventually whether Calypso liked it or not.

Now seemed as good a time as any.

"Leo's told me so much about you," she said, careful to make it sound off-handed even though it was very much a calculated move.

Calypso's hands stuttered, and she nearly dropped her shuttle. "Leo?" she repeated without turning around, her hair shielding her face from view. "You... you've met? Is he your—"

"No," Piper interrupted, immediately cutting off that train of thought. "No way. He's my little brother, sort of."

It was the first time she'd said it out loud. She hoped it wouldn't jinx them.

Calypso set the shuttle down and folded her hands in her lap, still keeping her face hidden. Her back seemed a little hunched, though, as if she was trying to surround and protect her heart with the strong bones of her back. "I see," she whispered.

Piper plucked an orange from the fruit bowl and started to peel it with her fingers, just to keep her hands occupied. "He hasn't given up, you know," she said, because it was the most important thing she could say, because Calypso needed to know that first of all, before anything else. "He's been trying all this time, but I guess whoever designed this curse of yours did a good job, because he hasn't had much luck."

Calypso's shoulders shuddered, and she drew her arms close in to her breast. "I told him," she said. "I told him he wouldn't. I told him not to bother. Why couldn't he just leave it?"

"He swore on the Styx," Piper answered, immediately kicking herself for not softening that.

"He what?" Calypso cried, whirling around and up to her feet, hands clutched white-knuckled to her breast. Her long hair fell around her shoulders, suddenly untidy as if it reflected the disorder of her heart. "Why would he—"

Piper cut her off again. "He loved you," she said simply. She hadn't meant to be rude this time, the question had just demanded an answer, and she'd had it to give.

"Loved?" Calypso echoed, emphasizing the past-tense suffix.

"He might still," Piper said, "I don't know for sure." That was almost a lie, and she felt uncomfortable in it. She was a diplomat, but her technique mainly relied on telling the truth very charismatically, not bullshitting her way through things until it was too late for either party to turn back.

"You don't think he does," Calypso said, taking the decision neatly out of her hands.

"No," Piper said honestly, hating how it made Calypso's face crumple and her shoulders sag. "No, I don't think he's in love with you anymore. But he still cares. That much I know for sure. He still wants to help you, he'd do it even if he hadn't sworn. He just can't find a way."

Calypso bit her lip to stem the tears that were threatening at the edges of her eyelids, but it wasn't very effective. Moments later, they overflowed and streaked her freckled cheeks anyway. "Then he doesn't even have much to look forward to, does he," she said. "I can't offer him much by way of thanks if he doesn't want my heart."

"He's not doing it for a reward," Piper said sharply, though she wasn't at all sure how true that was, "and wasn't even back then. He wants to help you because you deserve to be helped, and because he cares about you. That's all." It probably wasn't all, but she felt compelled to defend him in his absence.

Calypso half-shrugged, wiping her tears angrily. "He should have given up. I told him it was hopeless. He's just doomed himself."

"If anyone can find a way, it's Leo," Piper said, and that at least was honest, too.

Maybe Calypso could tell, because she managed to straighten her shoulders and collect herself. "Maybe you're right," she said, "but still, I wish he hadn't sworn on the Styx. He should have left himself a way out, at least. This way he will have to keep trying even when he doesn't want to anymore, even when he's accepted that it's impossible. He'll be trapped his whole life."

It was like listening to herself think. She'd had all the same thoughts over the years. Even so, it wasn't in her to let things look hopeless and bleak, even if they probably were. "Don't worry too much about him," she said. "He's tough, and he has friends to help him out. He's sad about you, but happy otherwise. His life isn't ruined, okay? And in any case, he made the choice himself. It's not your fault, so don't beat yourself up."

"Mm," Calypso said, gnawing her lip again and fighting back a fresh wave of tears.

"Anyway," Piper said, more than ready to redirect the subject upwards a bit, "I promised Leo I'd say hi to you if I met you, so... hi, from Leo. From Percy, too, probably."

Calypso's eyes widened. "You know Percy, too?"

"Yeah," said Piper. "He's a good friend. He and Leo and I and a few other people were kind of caught up in a prophecy... thing... and got to know each other pretty well. Well enough that I know he spent a couple of weeks here, and some details about it."

"Then between the two of them, you know all about me," Calypso said, blushing a little and crossing her arms defensively. "No wonder you weren't surprised by anything."

She had been watching, then. Piper filed that information away without comment.

"I don't, really," she said. "I know what they told me, which is just whatever they noticed as dumbass teenage boys. I knew where I was when I landed, and I knew who you were when I saw you, and they got the colour of your hair and a few other little things right. And I know a thing or two about your curse. The rest is still pretty much a mystery."

"Oh," said Calypso, tightening her crossed arms a little and saying nothing further.

Piper opened her mouth to ask any one of the dozen questions she had in mind, but found that couldn't give voice to any of them. Calypso look so small, and vulnerable, and unhappy, that all she could do was turn her attention back to the orange on the tabletop.

She'd made enough progress for the day. It was time to step back and let Calypso have her space again. Piper would approach again a few days later, maybe, with something small and inconsequential. The lake, maybe, or the weather. Something as far away from Calypso's feelings as possible.

She still had plenty of time.

 **X**


	4. WAITING

**Chapter 4:** WAITING

The storm raged through most of the night, a wild berserker thing, most definitely magical in nature. It probably hadn't been intended for them, but it was still a little humbling to lie under the thin layer of stone between herself and that boiling, lashing sky and know that something out there had the power to do that. It could have been any one of a number of gods — their powers were waxing these days, invigorated by the new ranks of North American faithful — but she couldn't tell which one from this far down.

Poseidon, maybe. Percy might've pissed him off again. They still didn't have the easiest relationship.

It eased up as the dawn crawled wearily over the horizon.

True to her word, Piper left in the early afternoon, as soon as the last of the rain let up. Trying to reconstruct a tent in driving rain was a miserable endeavour, and she'd take even Calypso's silent and uncomfortable company over it.

She said her thanks, and Calypso murmured some polite nothing in response, and seemed faintly surprised when Piper just left, as she'd said she would. She'd probably expected Piper to try and push them towards some kind of forced, stilted friendship right away, just to ease the tension a little, but Piper knew better than that.

The Kitfox had indeed managed to pull a fair number of its stakes, and skewed nearly ninety degrees and skidded about ten feet back towards the shore, but it was still there and in one piece. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

There wasn't much point putting the pseudo-tent back up yet, she realized. The sun was coming out, and covering the damp ground with raised tarps would just result in a miserable sort of sauna when the water tried to evaporate and couldn't.

So instead, she just grabbed her pole and headed up the Finger to the flat grey stone just before its point. She'd varied her fishing grounds, to avoid warning them off any particular area, and hadn't been back here in a while. The world felt fresh and new and strangely bright even in the dim, clouded sunlight. Out at the end of the long line of stones, she felt like she was sitting on the lake itself, surrounded by nothing by wind and water for uncountable miles. The lake lay quiescent. The very air felt scoured clean and renewed.

Piper had always liked the aftermath of storms. They made her feel calm and somehow hopeful.

Her catch was middling at best, but that was all right, because when she got back to the campsite there was another platter sitting in the shadow of the Kitfox's belly.

Calypso hadn't retreated against the small progress they'd made overnight, then. Piper grinned.

"Thanks," she said, almost certain Calypso would hear this time.

The hills and their cedars were silent, but she didn't feel alone anymore.

x

Piper's worst problem, after a while, was boredom. Even greater than the loneliness; focusing on Calypso and a whole lot of very intentional emotional control kept that mostly at bay, though it did come scraping at doors in the middle of the night sometimes. The boredom, though, was inescapable.

She had the hunting and gathering lifestyle down to a nice, comfortable habit, and while some of it did take some focus, a whole lot of it did not. Her mind took to drifting off of its own accord, going over all the things she couldn't do anything about, fixating on odd details she missed about the life she'd been cut off from. That life was beginning to feel a bit unreal to her. There was a world beyond the island, beyond the far edges of the mist-rimed lake, she _knew_ that, and yet it still felt strangely dreamlike despite all the pain thinking about it caused her.

Keeping her mind off it was essential for her emotional wellbeing, but there was just so little to do.

When she started catching herself mid-song, she couldn't find it in herself to be that surprised. She'd been named for her voice, after all. Her father had always been uncomfortably trapped between his heritage and his modernized, thoroughly untraditional life, but he'd still taken her to visit old Uncle Tom many times when she was a child, and she remembered the songs at least. Her father had always liked the songs. Still did, she thought; he always seemed delighted when she sang them for him.

Her extended family had taught her many more, when she'd sought them out in the her late teens — for that exact purpose, among others — and she'd kept those close to her heart, too.

Piper had been singing all her life. Singing now, when there wasn't much else to do, seemed only right. She sang the old songs, over and over to sink them deeper into her memory, but she also sang newer things; whatever popped into her head. Top forty stuff. Ballads from Hazel's beautiful record collection. Hymns from every church she'd visited with her father's friends as a kid, children's rhymes, silly campfire songs, anything she could think of. Focusing on making the sounds come out right kept her mind from withering in on itself in sheer, awful boredom, and it wasn't like Calypso _had_ to listen in if she didn't like it.

She'd had exactly one book in her bag — _Architecture of Illusions,_ which was not a good book but had been fifty cents at a used book sale — and she'd already read through it twice, miserably.

There was her journal, of course, but there are only so many ways a person lacking a poet's soul can memorialize the act of rooting through the underbrush for potatoes or staring at the spot where fishing line and bright water meet for three hours. If the weather changed, she made note of that, and occasionally found lovely things to comment on—a brightly coloured stone in the shallows, the emergence of a singing oriole in the thicket nearest her campsite, a particularly lovely day when a drift of nimbus clouds let loose a curtain of rain at midday while the sun shone on the lake all around.

Calypso wandered down every few days to observe and ask if Piper needed anything, and Piper got the hint: she was establishing contact on her own terms, and would prefer it if Piper didn't push for it on her own. Had Calypso been anyone else, Piper might've refused to back down, but Calypso was owed a little patience and courtesy for all her years of torment. It had barely been a month, she still had lots of year left.

Eventually, the pull of Katoptris became irresistible again.

She pulled it out and sat down on the Finger's second-last stone. Her favourite perch. Bracing herself, she unsheathed it and let the sunlight glint across it.

Having no heart, Katoptris pulled no punches.

Nico was not back.

Leo was curled up in Jason's lap, crying his eyes out. Percy was sitting with his back to Jason's, his face out of view but his shoulders hunched over. Jason was crying too, very quietly, his fingers fisted in the back of Leo's shirt.

Piper bit her lip until she felt it bruising. She'd known Leo would be worried, and she'd known he'd be hurt the worst if she went missing, but knowing it and seeing it were two different things. Seeing Jason cry for her hurt only marginally less. Percy... she'd only seen Percy cry twice, and even though she wasn't technically seeing it now she still felt awful. They'd probably held onto hope for quite a while, but she'd been missing for too long. From the colour of the vision, it was a few days old already. Whatever was happening with them now either wasn't worth seeing or wasn't any different.

Just as she thought she was managing to come to grips with that, Katoptris shimmered and she was looking at Frank and Hazel, going about their morning routines with hollow eyes and defeated postures. This one was very recent, probably from that very morning. They looked like they'd already done a lot of their grieving, but were still waist-deep in it, sluggish and cold around their limbs.

Katoptris flashed.

Reyna, jaw set in a grim line as she sat in a tidy garden, staring sightlessly into the east. Annabeth, lost in a sea of straight lines and grids and numbers, trying to find the logic in the loss of yet another friend. Thalia and Artemis and Zoe, hunting like wild things. They hadn't even been very close friends, but close enough for grief, it seemed.

Then, worst of all, her father. Katoptris hadn't so much pulled the punch as waited for her guard to drop.

She stared at that one for only a few seconds before Katoptris fell from her suddenly nerveless fingers and clattered across the flattened stone. Despite herself, she reached out to catch it before it fell into the water, but couldn't bring herself to look at it again.

A great, painful sob forced its way up her throat and out into the air, and she couldn't hold it back or silence it. Once it had won free, a dozen of its brethren followed in quick, harsh succession. She tipped over onto her side, put her hands to her face, and let them take her over.

It would be okay in the end, she knew. Nico would come back and tell them she wasn't among the dead. Iris would come back to work and she'd get a message through. She'd get off the island somehow and go back and reassure them and live her life and die of old age after they'd all gone ahead so they'd never have to cry over her again. Right now, though, they were hurting, and they'd been hurting for weeks, and she couldn't do anything to stop it.

It hurt, but she knew her pain was the lesser pain, and there was nothing more she could for now, so there was no sense drowning in guilt. She packed it away in the dark hole in her chest where she'd stuffed the loneliness and clamped a lid on it.

Wiping at her eyes, she sat up and headed back to shore.

Calypso was waiting for her just above the grass line.

"I heard you crying," she said, clasping her hands between her back and looking everywhere but at Piper's face. "I wondered if you'd hurt yourself and needed help."

Piper huffed a soft, bitter laugh. "I did, in a way," she said, "but it's nothing you can heal, unless you have a way to get a message to my friends and family."

Calypso's eyes darted to Katoptris, dangling from her white-knuckled fingers, and a brief flash of confused recognition crossed her face. "No," she said, "I'm sorry, I don't. Sometimes the gods come to visit me, but it isn't regular or predictable, and if they've ever heard me when I called for them they've ignored me every time. If one does come, however, I promise, I'll ask them to tell your loved ones where you are."

"Thanks," Piper said, "I appreciate that." She lifted Katoptris, letting the sunlight flash across it but careful not to look into it. "Do you recognize this?"

"Yes," Calypso said. "It... was in my keeping for a few years, near the beginning. It was meant to be a comfort, but it was a torment to me instead, so I asked Hephaestus to take it back to Aphrodite. I've missed it many times since then, but I'm glad I sent it away. It... can be useful, for some things, but it hurts so much."

"I feel that," Piper said fervently. "I'm going to put it away now. It's not useful for me, I just couldn't resist the curiosity. I... wanted to see how they were dealing with me being missing."

Calypso's eyes were just as astonishingly deep as they'd been when she'd first seen them, but they were warmer now, with sympathy or something like it. "Not well, I assume," she said.

"Not well," Piper echoed. "No."

They held each others' gazes for a long, awkward moment, then Calypso looked down at her feet.

"I'll probably regret this," she said, "but... if you want to move your tent up closer to the cave, it's all right. You're not going to get off my island any faster if I ignore you."

Piper bit her lip, holding herself back for a count of five before daring to respond. "Are you sure?" she said, low and careful.

"No," Calypso replied, candidly, shrugging one lovely shoulder. "Not even a little bit."

"Oh," said Piper, "okay," and couldn't think of anything else to say.

Calypso turned and headed off up the hill, and Piper surveyed her campsite. It was pretty tricked out now, and she was kind of ambivalent about the idea of rebuilding it somewhere else, but she knew refusing Calypso's generous offer would only make things worse between them. Sighing, she started packing things up, not taking much care to pack things tidily. She didn't need to sit in the plane's cockpit, and if she didn't have room for anything, she'd just come back. It was barely a ten minute walk.

When she was ready, she looked around the seemingly empty expanse of air around her. "Are you going to help me?" she said. "I definitely can't get this up the hill on my own."

They were, as it turned out. She put her shoulder to the rope and prepared to pull, but they whisked it away before she could move it so much as a single foot forward. Southwards down the shore her lovely plane trundled, bouncing gracefully over any stones in its path. She followed, bemused, as it circumnavigated the entire western side of the island and most of the southern. She understood eventually, though, when the sparse forest finally opened up on her left onto the sweeping green sward of grass which led up to the mouth of Calypso's cave. She'd seen it in her explorations, but half forgotten about it since it was too close and therefore off limits.

The hill the cave was set into was a majestic thing, a hundred and eighty feet tall and gracefully rounded, with a great crown of ancient cypresses circling its summit. She hadn't seen it from this angle before. While the air spirits worked, she stood admiring it for a moment.

The air spirits hauled the plane up the smooth expanse of the lawn with no apparent difficulty and parked it in the lee of a small copse of beeches on its western edge, seventy yards shy of the cave. It would catch the sunlight in the morning, but be shaded in the afternoon when the summer heat rose to its most oppressive heights.

"If you want anything from my gardens," Calypso said, seemingly materializing out of nothing onto the grass a few paces away, "help yourself. You seem to know a thing or two about not over-harvesting, so I trust you won't take everything from any given bed."

Piper turned and nodded to her. "Don't worry, you'll hardly notice I'm here."

"As if that's an option," Calypso muttered under her breath, but kept the smile on her face with some obvious effort. "If... if you want to come into the cave for whatever reason, please announce yourself beforehand."

"Don't worry, I'm not in the habit of going where I'm not invited," Piper said, intending to be soothing.

Calypso's face went cold. "You're here on my island, though, aren't you?"

Piper held her temper by a bare thread. "You know as well as I do that this wasn't a matter of invitation," she snapped. "I'm supposed to be in Iceland. Or the Ukraine, I guess, by now. I never meant to come here, and I wouldn't have if I'd been given a choice about it."

She immediately regretted raising her voice, as Calypso seemed to shrink in on herself.

"No, I guess you wouldn't," she said, and after a rigid moment of tension, turned and ran up the hill into the safety of her cave.

"I didn't mean it like that," Piper whispered, cursing herself for the slip-up. She really hadn't. She'd only meant that she had never wanted to be one of Calypso's doomed loves, that she didn't think she should be the person standing her having that particular conversation. It had stung her, though, the implication that she was an intentional and unwelcome intruder. She hadn't meant to come here. She hadn't lied.

She wasn't sure how to offer an apology without intruding further, though, so for the time being she turned her focus to recreating her plane-tent and arranging things properly.

Then she wandered up to the gardens, which were even more lush and lovely than they'd seemed from a distance. It was only late spring, but it seemed the gardens of Calypso followed no earthly seasons: a full quarter of the beds were fully ripened, a wide assortment of herbs and vegetables lying ready for the harvesting hand. There were even a few grape vines, curling around their delicate trellises.

Piper fetched a bowl she'd kept back from one of Calypso's platters and filled it with carrots and peas and cilantro and parsley, anything that tasted good raw. She hadn't dug a fire pit yet, and wasn't sure if Calypso would mind. It would be harder up here, too, compared to the sand and plentiful stones of the shoreline.

For tonight, she'd just eat what she could. She'd see about a fire pit tomorrow.

x

When she woke up, though, there was another platter outside the flaps of her tent. She'd angered Calypso the day before, but apparently not enough to get herself entirely cut off.

Breakfast was bread, cheese, an apple, and a lovely bowl of mixed greens with some kind of fruity vinaigrette.

When she'd finished up, she arranged the platter and stood up to stretch, facing the morning sun. She'd never been much of a morning person, but when one took away all the alarm clocks and street lights and glaring screens, it got harder to ignore the sun. She'd learned that from Camp Half-Blood first, but the effect was much stronger out here. Night was really night on Ogygia; when the sun went down, the only illumination came from the stars and the moon, and if it was overcast — as it had been for most of her stay so far, barring the odd sunny episode or storm — it got darker than anything she'd ever experienced in her life. Swallowing, endless, eternal darkness for uncountable miles all around.

It had made her uncomfortable at first, but she'd gotten used to it, and now she thought she might have trouble sleeping without a face-mask if she ever got back to the States. She hadn't understood how bright humanity had made everything until now.

Once she felt sufficiently awake, she set about digging the fire pit, and continued at it until Calypso came striding out of her cave with her hands on her hips ten minutes later.

"What are you _doing?_ " she screeched, staring at the defiled little circle Piper had created at the edge of the grassy sward. "What is that?"

"A fire pit?" Piper answered, genuinely befuddled. "I made one at the beach, too... if you're going to light a fire, you have to surround it with rocks and barren earth so it doesn't escape and start a forest fire. I figured you'd be mad if I burned your home down."

Calypso's anger faltered. "I... well, yes, I would."

"Then trust me, a fire pit is better than the alternative. Once I'm gone, you can just throw the burned bits of wood out and the grass should grow right back over it. Especially with your green thumb."

"Green... thumb?" Calypso furrowed her brow.

"A modern saying. It means you're good with plants and growing things."

"Oh, I see."

"So it's all right?"

Calypso looked unhappily at the scar on her flawless green lawn, but nodded. "I suppose."

Piper looked around. "I'm glad your air spirits put me here, rather than closer to your cave. The smoke might've bothered you otherwise."

"I don't really understand why you need a fire in the first place," Calypso said, crossing her arms.

"Well, uh, some people like fish raw, but I'm not one of them?" Piper said. "I don't even liked them cooked, but it's better than raw."

"I'll just feed you more, then," Calypso said decisively. "Then you won't need a fire."

Piper stared at her. "...Okay?"

"I... I thought you were eating the fish because you liked them," Calypso said, turning aside with a tiny, half-hidden blush. "I'm not very good at estimating the appetites of mortals. If you were still hungry you should have said so."

Piper stared some more. "I didn't want to impose... I know you don't want me here, so I figured I'd just—"

Calypso cut her off halfway through that thought by spinning back to face her fully, a painfully earnest expression on her face. "It's not exactly that I don't want you here," she said awkwardly. "It's... it's not like I hate you, I just... oh, I don't know how to explain."

"You don't have to," Piper said. "I assumed you had your reasons."

Shutting her eyes briefly, Calypso took a long breath and held onto it for a moment before letting it go. "I do, and I'd rather keep them to myself," she said, "but please rest assured, it's not really _you_ I'm mad at. It's the people who sent you here."

"The gods?"

"Yes. Zeus in particular, and his Fates. The other gods have tried to stop him, I think, but when he decides he doesn't like someone... Well, I'm sure you know."

Piper did know. She'd done a lot of reading, and spoken to a lot of people and a lot of gods. She remembered Percy's tale about the lightning thief, and how he'd been afraid to fly for years afterwards, even after he'd been proven innocent beyond a shadow of a doubt. Zeus was not a kind god. He was a powerful god, but power did not imply goodness.

"I know," she said, gently. "I'm sorry."

"It's not yours to be sorry for," Calypso said. "Not yet." Without taking the time to explain that, she half-turned to face up the hill. "Come to the cave for dinner tonight. I'm making carrot soup."

Piper watched her go, more than a little hopeful. She knew this was probably just the beginning of the inevitable end, but she decided then and there that it would be different with her. Every other hero who had known who Calypso was before landing had probably sworn the same thing, but they'd all been men. Maybe it really could be different with her.

 _If you need something said, ask a man,_ Aphrodite murmured in her memory, caustic and derisive. _If you need something done..._.

She wouldn't swear on the Styx, like Leo had. She was a clever, experienced adult; she knew the danger and power of making oaths one couldn't keep. She wouldn't swear out loud... but she fully intended to break this cycle, if she could. There had been too much pain already. A surfeit of suffering.

It would be different with her, she decided.

If the gods begged to differ, they would have to come argue it with her.

 **X**


	5. THAW

**Chapter 5:** THAW

As promised, she went up to the cave around dinner time. The sun was about to set, but resisting it, blazing all the more fiercely through the western forest in defiance.

The little stone table was set for two when she went into the cave, a fine spray of spring flowers adorning the vase in the center. Calypso was busy stirring the enormous pot hanging over her fire. It smelled incredible, soft and sweet and rich.

"Have a seat," Calypso said when she noticed Piper's presence. "Good timing, this is pretty much done." With an enormous silver ladle, she dished the bright, thick soup out into heavy earthenware bowls, bigger than any Piper had seen yet. "It's not very filling, so you'll have to eat a lot of it, but it's pretty good."

"If it tastes anything like it smells..." Piper said, trailing off as Calypso put one of the enormous bowls down in front of her. They must have weighed a fair bit, but Calypso hadn't shown any signs of difficulty at all. "Thank you."

A moment later, Calypso sat down with her own bowl and dug in without ceremony.

Piper followed her example, spooning up a good mouthful. "Oh, wow," she said. "I was kind of skeptical when you said 'carrot soup,' but this is amazing."

Calypso blushed, obviously pleased, and nodded to accept the compliment.

It was sincere. The soup was sweet, but somehow hearty and rich at the same time, delicately spiced and addictive. Piper shovelled it into her mouth as slowly as she could manage... which was to say, not very. When her bowl was empty, she looked to Calypso, who inclined her head. Piper got up and helped herself to a full second helping. She'd always had a good appetite. _Bottomless pit_ , her father joked in her memories.

Calypso had a second helping, too, but gave up when Piper went for her third.

"You weren't planning on eating this tomorrow, too, were you?" Piper asked in a momentary spasm of guilt.

"No," Calypso said, shaking her head in demurral. "Like I said, I'm bad at estimating mortal appetites. I made three times more than I thought we'd need, so eat as much as you like."

By the time Piper was done with the pot, there wasn't much left in it. She felt replete, utterly satisfied and ready for a good long night's rest. She let herself sit for a moment or two, to let it settle, and to make sure it didn't seem like she was eating and running. Then she carefully got up, stacked her bowl and utensils neatly for the air spirits, and faced Calypso.

"Thank you very much," she said politely. "I'll go out to sleep now."

"All right," Calypso said, getting up herself to tend to the pot.

"Uh," said Piper, just as she'd reached the edge of the cavern's boundary. "If you need me for anything... somehow... just let me know, okay? I'd like to help out, in return for everything you've done for me. Just saying."

Calypso said nothing, only watched her go with an expression that Piper was glad she didn't have to look at for more than a moment.

x

The platters started materializing more regularly, as promised. Piper happily gave up fishing, for the most part, in favour of helping out in the garden. As it turned out, even magical gardens got weeds sometimes, and Calypso seemed to appreciate the help. It was easy enough to tell what was supposed to be there and what wasn't, so it wasn't like she could screw it up too badly.

Calypso's brief visits became more frequent, and less chilly.

Often, if Piper was working in the garden, she'd come out quietly and tend to the aeration of a bed a few spokes away on the same wheel, or gather up a basket for dinner, or plant a space that had been lying fallow. It was almost full summer now, much too late to plant normally, but she didn't seem the least bit worried. She didn't seem to pay much heed to the seasons; perhaps Ogygia knew no winter.

She invited Piper up for dinner more often than not, after a few more weeks. If she chose not to, there was always a platter heaped up with more than even Piper's prodigious appetite could handle in one go.

Piper was careful to keep the conversation light and low-pressure, but even so it sometimes slipped into dangerous territory and left them sitting in stony, uncomfortable silence for a while. When that happened, she usually found an excuse to back off for a while, or if it was still salvageable enough, start a new thread on a much safer topic.

"By the way," she asked one day, forkful of meatless moussaka halfway to her mouth, "how did you know I'm vegetarian?"

"The pot," Calypso said, as if that explained anything.

"It's magic?"

"Yes."

"Cool."

The boredom was still her worst enemy. Now that she had the run of the place, she'd done a lot more thorough exploring, but there wasn't that much else to see.

The island was, as she'd correctly assessed it on landing, not much bigger than three square miles. The stony beach where Percy had landed was probably, from what she remembered of his tale, the one at the south end of the big lawn leading down from Calypso's cave. Leo's beach with its sandy dunes was on the western coast; she'd passed it on her way around with the plane. The island's eastern wing was shaped a bit like an axe blade, with a curving shore framed by two sharp peninsulas at the north and south ends, and little bays where they receded. Percy's beach was the southern one of those. Her favoured fishing spot, the Finger, was the western edge of the northern bay, a little spike to balance the weight of the blade.

The western half was mostly flowers, gardens and sporadic groves of various conifers and something she thought might be peaches and olives when they fruited. She'd become quite familiar with it. The eastern half, though, was more densely forested and had more deciduous stands mixed in with the ever-present juniper and cypress. In her explorations, she found a little creek burbling up from a hidden spring a short hike due east of Calypso's cave; that was probably where she got her fresh water for cooking, as it was closer than any of the beaches and smelled sweeter.

A little bridge crossed it further down its length, when it broadened in its approach to the easternmost shoreline. It was a simple thing of logs and planks, but just high enough above the clear rushing for Piper to sit on its edge and dangle her toes in it. However hot the sun got, it was always cool and shaded in that spot, so she found herself going back to it more and more often as summer deepened.

"I like it here, too," Calypso said, coming upon her there one day. "I can't see the shore from here, or hear the waves, so I can pretend I'm on a much bigger island. Or even the mainland, though I don't remember it well enough anymore to really get the feel of it right."

"I could describe it to you," Piper offered hesitantly. "I've kind of been to your old neck of the woods a bunch of times for a project I was working on. It probably doesn't look much like you remember, though."

Calypso sat down beside her on the little bridge, barefoot as always. She was just a hair too short to comfortably get her toes in, and frowned in annoyance. "I usually sit on the upstream side," she muttered, "the water's closer there. Anyway, no, thank you. It's... kind of you to offer, but it would just be like Katoptris, I think. Visions of something I can't have. It makes my island feel smaller, and it's small enough already."

"Fair enough," Piper said softly. "Sorry."

"It's all right, since you meant it kindly."

Piper couldn't think of anything else to say for the moment, so she turned her eyes onto the tumbling water and watched it flash across its stony bed for a while. This side of the island had more trees, but it was drier, more like the summers on the Mediterranean islands she'd been to had been. Trying to pin down Ogygia's specific climate was pointless, though, because it seemed to choose where it wanted to be on the map by some arbitrary system that shifted daily, and none of the parts of the island agreed in any case.

She remembered Leo muttering to himself in his workshop, words she was pretty sure he'd made up. _Everywhere and nowhere,_ he whispered into her mind's ear. _Unmanifested. Disaligned._

It borrowed things from Greece, from Italy, from the eastern seaboard of the United States, anywhere it pleased as long as it bordered on a certain band of latitudes within the Atlantic ocean. Trees that didn't grow in the Mediterranean grew here, alongside fruits that didn't grow in America. A freshwater lake in the middle of the great salt sea. An equally incongruous island.

A little prison paradise, two or three steps removed from the world.

"Hey," Piper said softly after a few minutes of surprisingly comfortable silence. She knew what she was about to say, and knew it was very possibly a bad idea, but the sunlight dappling through the trees and the gentle susurration of their leaves and the little stream made her feel calm enough to risk it. Everything felt too gentle for any mere words to do irreparable damage. "Can we be friends?"

Calypso kept her eyes on the stream, but her fists tightened on her denim-clad thighs. "You don't know what you're asking."

Piper sighed, but she was glad Calypso hadn't just gotten up and left, as she might have if Piper had asked the question anywhere else, or any earlier. "I know some things might be different for you because I'm not a man. I don't know what, or how important they are, but I'll take your word for it. In any case, I'll understand if you'd rather I just keep on keeping my distance. I just..."

"Want to get off the island?" Calypso said, not even trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

"No," Piper said immediately. "I mean, yes? Eventually. But I still have more than ten months of vacation left, I'm not in a big hurry for that. I'm more interested in just... getting to know you. There might not be much I can do for you, and I'm sorry about that, but nothing will change for either of us like this."

"Nothing will change for me in any case," Calypso said guardedly.

Piper frowned. "Getting your heart broken again wouldn't affect you at all?"

"You assume you _could_ break my heart."

"No," Piper said, "I don't. But if I can't, if you know for sure you can't love a woman, then what do you have to be afraid of?"

Calypso stared at her, momentarily rendered speechless with incredulity. "You can't — you don't — I mean, _think_ about it. What if you do get stuck here with me, _forever,_ just watching all your friends and family get old and die without you in that dagger of yours? Without being able to comfort them on their deathbeds? Or give them any good memories of you beyond your supposed tragic early demise? The gods do come here, but it's sometimes a hundred years between their visits. Can you honestly say you wouldn't hate me for being the reason you can't leave when you have so much to live for out there?"

Without thinking about it, without giving herself time to consider the repercussions, without being at all diplomatic for the first time in a very long time, Piper reached out and put her hand over Calypso's, stilling its trembling as best she could. "I can," she said. "I totally can."

" _How?"_

"It wouldn't be you I'd be mad at," she said, echoing Calypso's own earlier words. "It's not you keeping me here, any more than you're here by your own choice. I'd be mad _for_ you — for the both of us — not _at_ you. And besides, they won't think I'm dead forever. Sooner or later, Nico will come back and they'll know I'm alive. If he brings Isis with him, they'll know where I am, too, because if I'm not dead and I'm not anywhere within in the physical world or Olympus there's kind of only one other place I _could_ be."

"Two," Calypso corrected softly, biting her lip and looking down.

Piper furrowed her brow. "Two?"

"Tartarus."

"That—" Piper started, then paused, searching for breath. She let go of Calypso and drew her hand up to her chest. Now _she_ was the one trembling, and hard. "That didn't occur to me. The gates have been closed for so long, there's been practically no traffic, I kind of forgot... that's really... wow. I can only hope it won't occur to my friends, either, or I'll have a big problem. They _definitely_ can't go there looking for me. Half of them have PTSD over the last time they were there, and it would be worse this time since the gates are closed, so even the ones who don't have nightmares about it yet definitely would when they got back. _If_ they got back."

"Your friends have been to _Tartarus?_ And survived?" Calypso asked, astonished. "That's impossible."

"Nah. You want to hear the story? It's long, and really sad in a lot of places."

Calypso nodded, wide-eyed and eager, and Piper took a deep breath.

x

Somewhere around the two-month mark, Calypso presented her with a change of clothes. Piper had washed hers in the gentle lake water so many times they were looking a little ragged around the edges, so she was very grateful.

As with Leo, the replacements were essentially identical to the originals. Piper knew the loom was magic, so she didn't bother asking how Calypso had managed to make flannel and denim on an island that had the raw materials for neither. Between the shirt and the pants, she discovered half a dozen pairs of undergarments, which cranked her gratitude up to eleven. Doing underwear laundry every few days had gotten old really fast.

She'd learned to appreciate fashion, but at the root, she was still a pretty simple girl. One outfit was enough, in the absence of people to communicate with. It just felt good to wear something sturdy and clean.

Since their little heart-to-heart at the bridge, Calypso had been... if not warm, at least cheerful. Piper still lived in her little plane-tent down the yard, but Calypso's invitation to dinner had become a standing nightly affair, and they passed the time in cordial but careful small talk. Piper tried to break the modern world down into digestible chunks for her. Calypso asked astute questions now and then.

At one point, Piper started explaining the history of modern aviation, and that ended with Calypso stroking the long flanks of the Kitfox with wide-eyed admiration.

"Even ordinary humans?" she asked, awed. "Anyone can fly?"

"Yeah," said Piper, "if they have the money and the patience to get a plane and a licence. If not, they can still fly on commercial flights, though those are pretty expensive too. They'd just be passengers, not pilots."

"Flight," Calypso whispered dreamily. "I've done many things, but I've never flown. I've always imagined..."

"I'd take you up, but I'm pretty sure I couldn't get it off the ground with only one wonky propeller blade," Piper said ruefully. "The lawn here might be long enough for a runway, just barely, but with the slope... well, it would be hard to get it in the air."

"The air spirits could help with that," Calypso said sadly, "but I'm not sure what to do about the propellers. What are they made of?"

Piper broke it down for her, but couldn't really explain the history behind the hybrid materials she'd namedropped. She liked planes, but not to the point of knowing how to manufacture every component from scratch. She thought the shaft might be steel, and the blades themselves aluminum, but she wasn't sure, and it wasn't like there were mines on Ogygia anyway.

If her lovely Kitfox was ever going to reach the skies again, it would have to make it back to the mainland first.

Even so, it seemed to please Calypso when Piper offered to let her sit in the cockpit. It was meant for one, but she squeezed herself in too so she could show Calypso what the knobs and dials and levers did. She even fired it up once, and though the propeller flopped around sadly and the engine whined and wheezed a lot, it worked, which surprised and gladdened her. If only she'd had access to a hangar and parts, she almost felt could've fixed it herself.

"Sorry, I'm talking your ear off," she said in the middle of an explanation of dynamic thrust. "This is probably all Greek to you. No pun intended."

Calypso shook her head earnestly. "If I ever get off this island," she said, "I want to learn to fly. Everything you tell me will give me a head start."

"When," Piper said.

"Um?"

" _When_ you get off this island, I'll introduce you to my flight instructor."

Calypso lowered her russet head, hand falling from the lever she'd been hypnotically caressing. "I'm not getting my hopes up again," she said quietly. "I've had enough of that. No more."

Piper winced, reaching out to catch Calypso's retreating hand. "Sorry," she said. "You don't have to if you don't want to. I mean, I have enough hope for both of us, probably, so you can just leave it to me. I'll handle the optimism, you do whatever you need to protect yourself. Deal?"

Calypso bit her lip and squeezed Piper's hand. "If you insist."

Getting out the cockpit required almost more gymnastics than getting in had, and Piper spent a minute or so rolling around clutching her cramped left calf when she finally straightened the leg she'd had tucked under her for half an hour. Calypso hovered, looking mildly panicked but also confused. When she could talk again, Piper explained, and Calypso offered a warm compress, which she gladly limped up to the cave to accept.

"You know, if you don't like vegetarian stuff, I don't mind if you eat meat in front of me," Piper said as Calypso moved to attend the cauldron.

Calypso shook her head. "It's making very interesting things for you," she said. "I've never tasted a lot of these. They're very good. I don't mind at all."

"Cool," Piper said. "Just wanted you to know, just in case, I guess."

"I appreciate that," said Calypso, a warm smile gracing her face.

Piper swallowed whatever she had been going to say, unwilling to interrupt the radiance of that smile. Calypso's smile was... something else, she thought to herself. Human enough to recognize, divine enough to inspire awe. She felt the heat of it go through her like a swift tide.

 _I might be in trouble_ , she thought, very carefully, and then put the thought away for later consideration.

 **X**


	6. SUMMER

**Chapter 06:** SUMMER

Calypso smiled a lot, Piper discovered, when she wasn't actively mad about something or deliberately holding back.

Her garden made her happy. Storms and sunshine both made her happy. Dangling her feet in the little river, weaving, cooking, walking through the woods... everything seemed to be an occasion for joy. Sometimes, when Piper was lucky, she was the reason for it, and that was... well, that was _good,_ rewarding in a way she was afraid to examine too closely.

They talked a lot, because they both had a lot of stories to tell and Calypso always had questions about everything, but they slowly discovered that when left to its own devices, the silence between them could be very comfortable and pleasant too. As long as Piper kept her feet out of the conversational bogs that were Leo, Percy, and the curse, anyway.

They ate together at least once every day, and that was comfortable too. Often Piper would pull out what few small tools she had and do what she could for the Kitfox, and the sound of her banging around would always bring Calypso over to peer curiously into the workings of the plane's innards.

Calypso began to teach her the names of the stranger things in the garden, and reluctantly let Piper watch when she was weaving fresh curtains for the door of the cave. The old ones she fed to her spindle, which was less spectacular but equally magic. There was no normal way to get rid of things she didn't want, since anything thrown into the lake would wash up again eventually; disintegrating them and re-spinning them into fresh thread for her loom was how she dealt with that, and it seemed to work for most any material she chose to try it with. Piper was fascinated, and Calypso tolerantly allowed her to test it by feeding it snack wrappers, which magically become metallic silvery thread as the spindle drew them down.

Summer was in full, heady bloom. The stars overhead were hazy, the lake's waters restless and lukewarm, the copses and dells thick with growth and the smell of warm grass and wildflowers. Piper dragged her bedding out onto the grass and took to sleeping under the stars unless it was raining or looked likely to, and woke up feeling soft and deep and calm and a little damp from the dew.

It was a bit unsettling to her how easy it was to live here. Ogygia had its own rhythms, and she found herself settling into them like she meant to stay. Except she didn't; she fully intended to leave when the opportunity arose. Or so she told herself, but she believed it less with every day. Time seemed so alien here. Her memories of the world outside felt more and more like murky recollections of some fever dream, ephemeral and untrustworthy.

Ogygia was dangerous when it wanted someone to stay. She brought herself back to reality with thoughts of her friends and her father, whenever she caught herself drifting and settling like that, but it was hard, and it got harder every time she had to do it.

x

"Like this," Piper said, demonstrating again. "Right hand, left hand, push hard and aim for the sky, come down one leg at a time."

Calypso, jaw set in determination, took a deep breath and tried again. This time her legs got a little higher, but it was still a pretty ungainly sight, and still ended with Calypso in a heap on the grass. Piper smothered a giggle behind her hand.

"Don't laugh at me," Calypso said primly, getting up and dusting herself off. "I've gone three thousand years without needing to turn myself upside down, of course it'll take some getting used to."

"Of course," Piper agreed, grinning. "It's not something you need, though, it's just supposed to be fun. Some people use it to express happiness."

That was what had made her think of it, though her official excuse was that she wasn't good at many things that were this easy to demonstrate. Calypso had so much joy to express, and such a limited physical vocabulary with which to do it. She seemed like she ought to be turning cartwheels all the time, but didn't know how, so Piper had taken it upon herself to teach her.

It was funny, she thought. She'd heard Calypso's story, and had two firsthand accounts of parts of it, and from them she had expected Calypso to be a deeply sad sort of person, and angry, the way she'd come off when Piper had first met her. She had since come to realize that while sadness and anger were definitely in there, and justified, Calypso's essential nature was rooted in joy. It was why she had managed to stay sane despite all the years of isolation and heartbreak, and why she could never manage to shut anyone out for long.

Piper watched her try again, long legs and brown feet flashing through the air before she landed in a heap again. She smiled, her chest tightening.

"You have to really let go," she advised. "You might fall over the other way, but it's not far to fall, it won't really hurt much. Maybe picture one of the Kitfox's wheels, make it as big as you, and try to keep your whole body within that shape. Don't let your feet fall out."

Calypso huffed, pouted for a moment, then straightened her back. "Like a wheel," she said, mostly to herself.

"Up, up and away," Piper said softly.

Calypso furrowed her fine caramel brows and glared at the grass, then at the sky. "All right," she said, "okay. One more time."

Piper could tell the moment Calypso planted her right foot that it was going to work this time. Her form and momentum were both perfect. She watched, grinning proudly, as Calypso's bare feet flashed skyward and inscribed a nearly perfect circle before touching down, one after the other. She came upright again with a flushed face and radiant smile.

"I did it!" she exulted.

Piper raised her hands and clapped. "You did. Congrats."

She was not at all prepared when Calypso came charging up the lawn towards her to hug her briefly but fiercely around the waist. She stared, momentarily speechless, as Calypso pulled away and blushed.

"Thank you," she said. "It _is_ fun."

x

She was definitely in trouble, Piper admitted some two weeks later.

Something about knowing she might be cursed to fall in love with Calypso made her brain focus intently on any and all possible symptoms, and it wasn't like they were hard to find. Calypso's smiles had the same effect they'd had the first time, over and over again, intensifying each time. Calypso's anger and misery made her chest ache with sympathetic anger and misery of her own. She caught herself staring in awe and admiration at Calypso's hair and eyes and lines and grace at every turn.

There was also the fact that Calypso was, despite her early thorns and prickles, very easy to love. She was thoughtful and generous and quick to laugh, intelligent and curious, inclined to wear her feelings on her sleeve. Having apparently given up on trying to keep Piper entirely out, she was excellent company and a joy to be around.

Piper began to wonder if there really was a countercurse ensuring every person who came to Ogygia would have to love her back, or if it was just hard _not_ to. She made a mental note to ask her mother when she got off the island. Aphrodite would know. She could always tell true love from false... and if there was a curse, she was responsible for it.

It wasn't love, though, she thought. Not yet. She just really, really _liked_ Calypso. Calypso was very likable, and they were stuck with each other for the indefinite future. It would be strange if she didn't get closer and have feelings about it, she decided. This was normal and she was fine and she was not going to do anything stupid like fall for Calypso and then leave to spend the rest of her life pining and regretting like Leo had. She would find another solution, somehow. She was smart and there was plenty of time.

Summer wore on.

x

The river, Piper discovered, was better for bathing in than the lake itself.

It was colder, but the rushing waters did a much better job of carrying away any dirt and grease she'd accumulated while working in the garden or on the plane. She felt much cleaner already, though she ardently wished for some shampoo and conditioner. Calypso had lent her some hard soap that didn't produce much in the way of suds, and it did the trick for her skin, but she didn't dare use it on her hair. She wondered how Calypso's hair stayed so beautiful and shiny and soft without the benefit of chemical treatment, and made up her mind to ask. It couldn't hurt, and maybe Calypso had some kind of herbal conditioner or something.

The water felt wonderful. The spot she'd chosen was a little deeper than most of the river, but if she stood all the way up it barely covered her belly button. It was a little wider, too, so that the current wasn't strong enough to haul her off downstream against her will. The riverbed was smooth stone underfoot, not slippery but not jagged enough to hurt. It was perfect.

"I, um," Calypso said.

Piper whirled around, instinctively sinking under the water and covering herself as best she could. She wasn't blushing yet, but the water was cold and she was too startled to properly react just yet.

"This is a good spot for bathing, isn't it?" Calypso said. "Actually, the best spot on the whole island. Which is why I come here. To bathe. Every day. I mean... um."

"I had no idea," Piper said honestly, feeling Calypso's eyes on her and wondering how she felt about it, how she should feel about it, and finding no answers whatsoever. "I'm really sorry, I'll go somewhere else if you'll, uh, give me a minute."

Calypso politely turned her back. "It's... it's all right," she said, "you can use it too if you want, maybe just... let me know? When you're planning on it? So I don't... um."

"You got it," Piper said, "though honestly, I don't mind, I was just startled. A couple of years in the Aphrodite cabin at Camp Half-Blood will kind of scrape whatever scraps of modesty you might have clung to right off of you."

"I didn't actually mean you," Calypso said awkwardly, stumbling a bit, "I meant, so I don't, uh. You might be fine with being seen, but... I'm not all that used to doing the seeing, if you follow."

That blush that had been building finally broke over Piper's face in a huge red wave, so hot she felt she had no choice but to dunk her head in the water to cool it down before responding. "I'm really sorry," she said when she came back up, "I will definitely be sure to give you some warning next time, I didn't even consider that, I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," Calypso said in a tiny voice, backs of her ears distinctly rosy. "It's just... I've been here a long time on my own, and having someone else around is already interesting enough on its own. You don't have to be naked too."

"That's just overkill," Piper agreed faintly, then wondered exactly what word she'd said in Ancient Greek that corresponded to 'overkill.' She didn't think about it much anymore, but every now and then it occurred to her again that Calypso was not speaking English and neither was she. Considering all the untranslatable pop culture references she made in idle conversation, it was a wonder Calypso understood her at all.

If Calypso was confused, she didn't show it. "Right," she said, "but as long as you warn me, it's fine."

"Will do," promised Piper.

"Thank you," said Calypso, a little more seriously and miserably than the situation seemed to warrant. Back straight, she marched off back up the hill to wait her turn.

Piper watched her go, feeling odd about the whole thing but not being to put her finger on exactly what kind of odd she felt.

At least she felt clean now.

x

Calypso was a little strange at dinnertime. Not strange enough to justify comment, but off enough to be very obvious to someone who had made a literal business of observing people's reactions and responding to them as Piper had.

She seemed drawn up into herself, tense and careful. When she put the plate down, it rattled a little, transmitting the tremor of her hand to the table. She said very little.

Piper was at a loss. It wasn't obvious enough to bring up without seeming like a hyper-scrutinizing stalker person, but Calypso was clearly bothered by something and Piper wanted to help her feel better about it. The warring impulses grumbled at each other all the way through dinner.

One of them finally won out just as she was about to head out to sleep. Gritting her teeth and crossing her fingers, she turned around and faced Calypso, who looked a little puzzled. "Um," she said, not sure how to start but unable to turn back at this point. "If I'm wrong, sorry for making things weird, but... is there something bugging you?"

Calypso cringed a little, turning half away. "It's not really anything," she said, clutching her hands together at waist height. "You don't have to worry about it."

"I may not have to, but if you're upset I'm going to worry about it, just so you know," Piper said, as reasonably as she could.

"It's just," said Calypso, stopping partway in and clamping her mouth shut as if trying to physically hold something in.

"Just what?" Piper prompted. "It's okay, you can talk to me, I'll help as best I can."

"I'm not... sure it's something you can help with," Calypso said unhappily. "In fact, it's probably the opposite."

"Oh," said Piper, not sure where to go after that. "I don't want to make things worse... but are you sure there's nothing I can do?"

Calypso bit her lip and drew in a hard, high breath, then let it out in a short, harsh wash. "Listen," she said. "Can I tell you a secret? Will you promise not to use it against me if I do?"

Piper walked back into the cave and took her usual seat at the table, inclining her head. Calypso took hers and faced her across the table, fingers tightly laced together. Whatever she hadn't said yet was weighing her down, dragging at the skin under her eyes and bowing her shoulders. It was heavy, and it hurt to carry, Piper could see that much.

"The thing is," she said, after taking a good moment to pull herself together. "Before the island, before the curse... I was alive long enough to get to know myself pretty well, okay?"

"Okay," agreed Piper, completely in the dark so far.

"I had time to figure out what I liked. _Who_ I liked. I never fell in love but I was pretty sure what kind of person it would be with when I did."

"Okay," said Piper again, just to fill the pause.

Calypso bit her lip again, harder. "The Fates have only ever sent me men," she said, "but I... They sent me men because they didn't know me, because they didn't take the time to look at what would hurt me most, and I've always been very glad for that, because I could survive being abandoned by men even if I loved them on some level, and I don't know what to do now."

The wheels turned over in Piper's mind, each cog pulling them along until everything fell into place. "Oh, man," she said, sinking her chin into her palms and staring at Calypso in horrified empathy. "You mean to say-"

"I mean to say," Calypso confirmed, looking more miserable with every second. "I thought... when they sent you... they'd finally realized. I thought they wanted to hurt me badly enough that I'd take myself out of the picture for the next good long while. I thought I was being told to die like a good girl and I was so... so angry."

"For good reason," Piper breathed, barely daring to move. "Anyone would be."

"So," Calypso continued, though there were tears now, and they were choking her voice until every word sounded like it was hurting her on its way out. "When I saw you there, in the spring, it felt like... like something cruel, aimed to hurt me. I know you didn't mean it like that. You didn't mean for me to see you at all, you had no idea, I'm not being fair and I know it but it just... it felt like the Fates were taunting me, and it hurt, it hurt so much. I _hate_ this."

"I," Piper began, then faltered. "I hate that you're forced into this, and I feel like I should say I hate it too, in solidarity or something. I know I shouldn't rub it in, I'm not a cruel person, I swear I'm not, but I - I really just-"

"Say it, please just say it," Calypso whispered, sinking her face into her hands. "Tell me something good will come of this, even if you have to lie."

"I don't lie if I can get away with telling the truth," Piper said quietly, "so I won't this time. Curse or no curse, I really like it here. I like being with you. I like you. I like this place and I like it because _you've_ made it the way it is. I'm happy here, and I feel like even if the price for that is false love, maybe that isn't so bad. That's unfair to you, I'm sorry. It's all unfair and I'm sorry for everything, please don't hate me, please."

"I couldn't even if I wanted to," Calypso said, and Piper's heart twisted painfully. "That's the whole point, they send me people I can't help but love, people I can't help but forgive even when they hurt me."

"Have I hurt you?" Piper asked, suddenly desperate. "If I've done anything at all to hurt you, please tell me so I can apologize and avoid doing it again, _please_."

Calypso raised her head and gave Piper the most beautiful and awful smile Piper had ever seen in her life. It was sweet and warm and looked like the hilt of dagger, with the pointy end buried in Calypso's heart. "No," said Calypso, "no, you haven't done anything to hurt me. You're just here, and I'm so happy about that but also so afraid. I don't even know how to begin telling you how afraid I am."

Piper didn't want to ask, she could see that it would only twist that dagger, but she had to know before she could do anything else. "Are you, uh," she said, "do you... already feel that way about me? I'm not asking to be a jerk, I just-"

"I know why you're asking," Calypso interrupted, "and you deserve the answer, so yes. Yes, I'm already in love with you. It comes so quickly with me, you know. I fell in love with Percy before he even woke up. I fell in love with you when I heard you singing... maybe a little earlier, but definitely then. I didn't tell you because it's nothing special, really. It happens no matter what I do. You know that. It doesn't mean anything, except to me."

Piper was at her limit. Despite that, she made herself stay where she was, with an effort of will beyond just about any she'd had to make before. She'd faced down monsters and gods with less strength than this required of her, but she did have it, she had just enough to stay where she was and communicate with words alone. "You're wrong," she said, very carefully. "It means a lot to me."

"Even though you know it would be the same if you were anyone else? Even if you know that it doesn't matter who you are, that I can't help it?"

"Um," said Piper. "Actually, I don't think just anyone would do. I think there were really long gaps between the castaways they sent you because of that. I think you're as picky as anyone else, you just have other people sending you the candidates that have a chance. Maybe that's just wishful thinking, I don't know... but I don't think so."

Calypso's face crumpled, but she didn't cry. "I hope you're right. I hope it's not just that I have to love anyone they send me, regardless of whether they deserve it or not, regardless of whether or not I would love them if I met them outside of the island and without the curse. But I'm not sure, and I hate not being sure. I hate that the way I feel about you and the way I've felt about all the others might just be shallow magic. I hate that I might be so inured to this that I can't tell the difference anymore."

Piper grimaced. "If you'll let be really unfair for a moment," she said, "can I just say that I really want to hug you? You don't have to let me, I know it might be a terrible thing to ask. It's just instinct. When people I care about are in pain I hug them. I care about you. It doesn't... it doesn't have to mean anything else."

In answer, Calypso nodded tearfully and stood up to wait for Piper to come to her.

Piper did. She was very careful to keep her hands to the safest possible places, and stopped herself from pressing her face into the side of Calypso's neck. It was harder than it should have been, and that scared her.

Silently, she cursed her mother's name. Aphrodite had built this curse and so it was full of love but it was so cruel, so cruel.

Calypso's arms circled her waist and Calypso's face pressed into the strong line of her left shoulder and Piper imagined sinking Katoptris into some physical manifestation of the curse and shattering it to pieces. She fantasized about making Calypso free, and felt powerless in a way she hadn't in years. She couldn't fix this. She couldn't even alleviate this, or work around it. She could only make it worse and she couldn't even stop herself from doing it.

"I'm sure a lot of people have said this to you before," Piper said into the silky cinnamon-scented tumble of Calypso's hair, "but I'm going to try to help you. I don't know what I can do, if anything, but I'm going to try. I want you to know that."

"Actually," mumbled Calypso into her shoulder, "very few have. Just Leo, actually. Losing him was... worse than most of them have been. It should have been better, because I could convince myself that he was out there somewhere trying to save me, but it wasn't because I didn't believe he could do it. Just like I don't believe you can. Thank you anyway."

Piper kissed the side of her russet head, sank her fingers into the soft spaces between Calypso's ribs, held as tight as she could without squeezing the breath right out of her.

She was in trouble, she knew. She was in so much trouble, and she couldn't back out even if she wanted to, which she didn't.

She had no idea what she was going to do, but she was going to do something. This couldn't be allowed to stand. It couldn't be allowed to play out again the way it had every time back through history.

Piper McLean could be very stubborn when she decided something was worth her while.

 **X**


	7. FALL

**Chapter 07:** FALL

By silent mutual agreement, they avoided each other for the next two days.

Sometimes it was best just to let things cool down a little, to let the heat of a chemical reaction dissipate before adding anything more. Piper stepped back and let things settle. Calypso didn't chase her. It wasn't a bad sign.

The eastern side of the island was still mostly unexplored, and the largest chunk of the island by far, so that's where Piper went. She skirted the east edge of the southern bay, walking just far enough up from the shore to benefit from the shade of the treeline and the solid ground under her feet without blocking her view of the water. There wasn't much to see, nothing she hadn't seen a hundred times before, but the shifting angles of the familiar silver stretch seemed new and exciting anyway.

When one is confined, one's mind searches for ever smaller details to fixate on, seeking to make its prison feel larger in comparison.

Piper wondered what Calypso saw when she looked at the island now. Did each blade of grass between the beds of her garden look unique to her? Was the hatching of each new bird a momentous event? Did she watch each day's sky like she was reading the next novel in the longest series ever written?

Piper thought again about how hard it was to hold onto time, here, when it felt so much like nothing could ever really change. Seasons would pass, here, yes; the leaves would change and fall and grow fresh and green in the spring, the birds would live out their short lifespans and leave a new generation in their wake, the sunset would be different every day, but it didn't feel like it was going anywhere but around in a broad, lazy circle. It fluctuated, cyclically, but it didn't _change._ There was no peace to be made, no conflict to resolve, no cruelty, no judgement, no hatred, no room for so many of the things that made up humanity as she knew it.

She liked it. It was very comfortable to live each day like she was immortal too.

Piper resolved to pull out Katoptris when she got back to her campsite, if only to remind herself that the rest of the world was changing plenty and leaving her behind in the process. Her friends. Her family. Herself - she might feel immortal, but she wasn't. She would get old and die eventually, having seen nothing after her twenty-third birthday but gardens and skies and a few dozen generations of lorikeets.

It was dangerous to think about wanting to stay. She had to remember what she would be losing if she gave up on wanting to leave. She had to remember that she was human, not a Titan, and could not share a life like this with one for long.

She had to.

Towards the northern end of the eastern edge of the island, as the sun was sinking behind the bulk of the island at her back, she found a nice clear spot under the spreading branches of an ancient cypress and laid her bedroll on the mat of dirt and detritus. It didn't look like it was going to rain, but one never knew with this place.

Munching on the packed dinner she'd brought with her, she looked out through the drooping scaly branches and thought about things some more.

She had no tools with which to break the curse. She had leverage, maybe, but not enough for this, not on its own. Zeus had already refused her once and she had nothing new with which to change his mind. Other gods owed her favours, but not any big enough to compel them to go against Zeus when he'd put his foot down. They might put in a good word for her, but not much more than that.

That left finding more leverage somehow, pulling off a trick, or giving up.

Finding more leverage required contact with the rest of the world. Tricking Zeus required a great deal of cleverness and also bait, which she didn't have at the moment either. Giving up looked very appealing, but it wasn't really in her nature, and besides, she'd made a promise she didn't intend to renege on.

That left her... where?

Pretty much exactly where she'd been along: stranded.

She drew in a long, measured breath, held it for a few moments until her head swam, then let it out bit by bit.

Autumn was encroaching. Leaves were turning yellow here and there, and there was a fine litter of them already scattered across the grass, fragile and brown at the edges. The wind at night had a bit of a bite to it already.

She had assumed, based on a faulty belief that Greece had very mild winters, that she would be able to sleep outside year round. Calypso assured her that was not the case: though Ogygyia's winters were not usually bitter, it did get cold and there was occasional snow and often howling, knife-sharp winds.

Soon, they would have to figure out what to do about that. Piper's plane-tent would not save her from the winter winds, and she didn't relish the idea of trying to sleep in her plane. The only real shelter on the island was Calypso's cave, and they both knew it.

That said, they still had a month or so. Maybe in that time Piper could figure out how to build herself a log cabin or something.

Propping her back against the rough bark of the cypress, she looked out through the branches to the glimmer of the lake. It was usually more fun to watch the sunset from the west bank, where all the action was, but there was a peculiar quiet magic to the east, too: a slow fade into gloaming, a sourceless glow of colour along the edges, the brightening stars as the blue daylight canopy fell away.

By the time true night had fallen and the waxing gibbous moon was high in the south, she'd come no closer to an answer, but had found some measure of peace with her lack thereof.

She wouldn't give up. She would keep looking. She would do her damndest to keep the rest of the world in mind. But she wouldn't feel guilty for enjoying her days here, either; that was pointless and wouldn't help anything.

Sighing, she tipped over and lay with her face on the edge of her bedroll, inches from the fragrant deadfall carpet.

Tomorrow she would go back to her campsite, dig out Katoptris, anchor herself. Then she'd talk to Calypso about winter and walls - a safe enough topic, relatively. That was about as far ahead as she'd ever planned anything, so she left it at that and shut her eyes.

The silence, heavy as a blanket, pressed her down into the earth. She slept.

x

When she awoke, it was autumn in earnest. Something undefinable but tangible had shifted during the night, and now the world was winding down, curling in, bracing for the long and weary darkness.

Shivering, Piper rolled up her bedding and set out northwards at a brisk pace, working the stiffness out of her limbs. She'd gotten used to sleeping on the ground and no longer felt that, but the cold was something new.

The island wasn't really large enough for a proper hike; she was dragging it out, stopping to look at everything and doing long periods of nothing on sunny rocks here at there. If she really went for it she could probably cirumnavigate the island in a few hours. It had felt bigger before she'd explored it.

Sometime in the mid-afternoon, she ended up back at the beach she'd first landed on. There was no sign left of her arrival left. No wheel-tracks in the sand, no footprints, no fire pit. The wind and its air spirits had smoothed away any evidence of change, and now it was like she'd always been here.

She stopped for a while, staring, then sat cross-legged between the tufts of yellow beach grass and looked out westwards.

Somewhere, far across the water, past the mists where the lake became the sea, was her home. Everyone she loved was waiting there for her. She had to go back. She had to leave when she found the chance, and go home, and show them all she was all right, and live her mortal human life. She had to, but she didn't want to.

Every person she loved save one.

Piper drew her knees up and pressed her face into them, trying to push the tears back into her head where they belonged.

In the real world, it probably took longer than a few months for adults like her to really fall in love with someone. There was so much else to life, so many other things to do, the time two people could spend together and the amount of focus they could spare for each other was necessarily limited. There were always bills to pay, other relationships to maintain, goals to pursue.

This was like being back in high school, except somehow even worse because there were no other students to provide any mitigating influence.

It was just her and Calypso and the island, nothing to look at but each other. She'd fought it, for Calypso's sake, as Calypso had fought it, but Calypso had lost and so had she.

"Why are you crying?" a soft and familiar voice asked behind her.

"Oh, don't ask me," Piper said, gasping through her thick throat. "Don't, you don't want to know."

Calypso sat down next to her, carefully, tucking her muscled brown legs off to the side. She was wearing a dress, white and simple.

"How come you're not wearing jeans anymore?" Piper asked, desperate to talk about anything but the heart of the matter.

Shrugging, Calypso plucked at the drapes of white fabric and gave her a crooked smile. "It's a habit," she answered. "Whenever someone comes, I copy their clothes for a while, to amuse myself. The jeans were strange enough to be fun for quite a while, but I got tired of them."

"You're not copying me," Piper pointed out.

Calypso, unfortunately, blushed. "No. It seemed... well, it's hard to explain, but it's... too..."

"Intimate?" Piper suggested, controlling her face with every ounce of willpower she'd learned over years of diplomatic efforts.

The blush deepened from 'rosy' to 'fiery' quite abruptly. Calypso mirrored Piper's earlier position, hiding her face in her knees.

Piper got it. She hadn't been afraid to do it with the boys, because they were boys, and fairly oblivious boys besides. They wouldn't have thought it might mean anything to her. She hadn't been afraid to love them, because they couldn't mortally wound her by leaving. Unwilling, yes, but not afraid.

"If I promise not to read anything into it," Piper said, "will you try out my shirt at least? Flannel's really comfortable, and the buttons make it easy to wear. You might like it."

Calypso tilted her head on her knees to look at Piper and smiled. "All right, then, I will."

"Make yours green or blue," Piper suggested. "Or yellow. Anything'll look better with your hair than red."

She was babbling, just about, but Calypso was smiling at her so it was okay. Everything was okay.

"Are you hungry?" Calypso asked. "You only took enough for dinner, not breakfast and lunch too."

"Starved," Piper admittedly shamefacedly.

Calypso rose to her feet, brushed the sand away, held out her hand to help Piper up. "Come up for dinner."

Piper hesitated, then took it. "If you're okay with it."

"You're acting like we had a fight," Calypso pointed out, gently. "We didn't. I'm not angry with you, Piper. You don't need to avoid me."

"I was just giving you a little room to process," Piper protested.

"I'm not sure I'm the one who needed it," Calypso said, "but all right. Listen: come up for dinner. I promise you it's all right."

Piper met her eyes for a long moment, evaluating, then nodded.

"What's cooking?" she asked, satisfied that Calypso wasn't forcing herself.

Calypso shrugged. "Don't know yet. I figured I would let the pot surprise me tonight. Unless you have some preference?"

They chatted on the way back to the cave over the hills, walking close but not too close.

The pot served up broccoli and cauliflower with cheese and garlic, which delighted both of them, Piper because she hadn't had her father's favourite in-a-hurry-no-time-to-cook dish in a long time and Calypso because it was new to her and also delicious.

They talked about nothing over it, this year's harvest and the unusual crop of dragonflies and the sunset Piper had missed last night, looking eastwards into the dark.

While they sat and let it settle before tackling a saskatoon pie, Piper brought up the winter and her lodgings.

"I thought maybe I could build a log cabin," she said, self-consciously running a hand through the hair at the back of her head. "There are lots of trees around, and they'll grow back. I don't have an axe or anything but I figured you might have an idea or two."

"I could make you an axe," Calypso said slowly, furrowing her thick reddish brows, "but that's a lot of effort to go to for something that could be solved much more simply."

Piper raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

Calypso didn't blush, but it looked to Piper like a near thing.

"Well, I have shelter here," she said. "There's room enough. Why would you need another?"

"You know why," Piper said quietly.

This time Calypso did blush, and looked down at her plate like it had called her name. "I know why," she admitted, "but the trees of this island are... dear to me. I don't begrudge you the branch you took for your fishing pole, but all the same, I would rather it ended there."

That hadn't occurred to Piper, but it seemed obvious now. She'd wondered yesterday about how much detail Calypso noticed. Of course it made sense that after three millennia she would know and care about every tree. She regretted that fishing pole, now; she hadn't even enjoyed the fish, and that seemed somehow disrespectful from where she now stood.

"Fair enough," Piper said. "So... uh."

"So when it gets too cold, you should move your bedroll inside," Calypso said patiently, practically. "Or earlier, as it suits you. Any time is as good as any other."

"You're sure it wouldn't be an imposition," Piper said cautiously.

Calypso rolled her eyes. "I'm not made of glass, you know," she said. "The hard part is already over."

For her, it was, Piper understood. Calypso wasn't struggling anymore. She was just letting things be as they were, unresisting, waiting to see how they would play out. Piper didn't know whether it was courage or exhaustion but either way, it woke something up inside her, something that also could have been either or both of those.

She was tired of fighting a war already lost.

"Hey," she said, managing somehow to meet Calypso's eyes across the polished grains of the table and their uneaten plates of pie. "Just so you know, I love you too."

Calypso stared at her.

"I'm not going to ask anything of you," Piper said wearily. "I just figured... you were honest with me, so it's only fair if I tell you the truth in turn. Right?"

"Right," said Calypso faintly. "Right."

"So yeah. I've got it pretty bad for you. It might just be the curse, I honestly don't know, but it feels real enough to me, as I'm sure it does for you."

"Right," Calypso echoed, apparently having lost every other word in her vocabulary.

Piper poked awkwardly at her pie. "Sorry if this makes it weird for you."

Calypso stared, and stared, and stared.

Piper dug into her pie, and after a moment Calypso did too. They finished their slices in silence, sent the dishes off for washing with the air spirits, stood up. Piper thanked her, briefly, and went to leave.

Calypso caught her wrist. How, Piper didn't know; she'd been ten feet away when Piper had looked last, but here she was, hanging on to Piper's right wrist with both hands for dear life. "Wait," she said, strained and short of breath. "Wait, wait a minute."

Piper turned back, nervous.

Calypso dragged in as deep a breath as it seemed she could manage, ragged and fast. "Say it again," she pleaded. "Say it again, please, Piper-"

Abruptly, Piper realized that Calypso had avoided saying her name. With only the two of them there, it hadn't really been necessary anyway; there was no need to specify who was being spoken to, as there was only ever one other person _to_ speak to. Even so, it suddenly struck Piper as a little strange that Calypso had gone months without saying it, even for punctuation in a sentence as anyone else would have.

Strange, yes, but she understood the reason just as quickly as the strangeness struck her. If copying her clothes would have been too intimate for Calypso's comfort, somehow this was even worse. Her name in Calypso's mouth was a benediction, a helpless prayer for something neither of them dared to name.

Piper looked down at Calypso's fingers, brown and trembling, clenched around her wrist. She put her free hand atop them, trying in some way to still them.

"Which part?" she asked, though she knew.

Calypso looked at her, something between a plea and a silent imprecation. "Piper," she said, softly, reproachfully, and again there was that awful weight to it, that heavy bloom of significance.

"I love you back," Piper said, because there was nothing to do but answer to that. She thought she might cry. She could taste saskatooons and pastry in the corners of her suddenly dry mouth, and she knew Calypso could too, and it was so hard to believe in that moment that there was anything to the world beyond the cave, beyond the boundaries of their bodies. "Okay? I tried not to because I didn't want to make it harder for you but there it is, I can lie till I'm blue in the face in the service of peace but I'm terrible at it when it comes to things like this. I have it so bad for you, I don't even know what to do with myself."

There were tears in Calypso's eyes, on her cheeks, but she wasn't exactly crying. There were no heaving sobs, no hard constricted breaths. There were just tears, and a luminescence in her face like the sun was on it even though it was long after dusk now.

Piper, having no idea what to do or what was needed, just blundered on, earnest and forthright. "I mean, lots of people must have said that to you, I know, so it might not mean much, even without the curse or whatever, but-"

"No," Calypso interrupted, urgently, "no, no, Piper, _no one_ has ever said that to me before."

"No one?" Piper repeated. She couldn't believe it, but at the same time... yes, she could. She really could.

"No one," Calypso confirmed, letting go with one hand to fitfully wipe the tears away. They were replaced moments later by fresh ones, and those she left, recognizing the futility. "Never once, not ever. I fall in love every time and sometimes they like me and sometimes they might love me back but they only realize it as they're leaving, leaving because they have to, because there's something important out there for them that isn't me, and so they have no time or inclination to tell me. You're the first. You've been the first in so many ways. If all this is meant to destroy me, Piper, it's going to work."

Somehow, after that, Piper had her arms around Calypso and was squeezing half the life out of her. She hadn't meant to do it, and didn't remember pulling her hand out of Calypso's. Time just moved from there to here, one still frame to the next, slowed down so far that nothing seemed to move anymore.

Time was never all that real on Ogygia, but right now it didn't exist at all.

In that timeless twilit space, Calypso leaned back a little and lifted her face, tearstained and more beautiful and sad than anything mortal could ever manage. There were three thousand years and change of heartbreak and changeless exile in her eyes, but also something else, something new.

Something had changed. In this place, where the seasons ran in a circle and went nowhere, where every new bird was identical to the birds that had come before, where evolution and progress could not exist, something real had changed. Piper felt it just as Calypso did.

"Calypso," she said, "I don't think whoever sent me here meant to destroy you. I think maybe they meant to save you. It's just a hunch, but there it is."

Calypso took Piper's face in her hands. Her hands were warm, a little damp, so human despite all the history in the blood running through them. "I'm not sure I care what they meant, anymore," she said.

"Me neither," whispered Piper, and leaned down.

She didn't feel a shift this time. This wasn't a major change, apparently; maybe others had kissed Calypso before, maybe it didn't mean much of anything in the big picture.

It meant enough to her.

Piper had one hand in Calypso's hair and the other around her ribs, pulling her up and in, yearning to be closer. Calypso's arms had curled around her neck, pulling her down. They met halfway. It wasn't like fireworks. The earth didn't move. It was just like kissing someone she was in love with, and that was magic enough.

Since time wasn't real, it was hard to tell how long it lasted; a moment, a millennium, anything in between. Whatever the case: not long enough.

"Oh," said Piper.

Calypso smiled. "Another first," she said.

Piper frowned. "No one's kissed you before?"

"Not like that," said Calypso. "Not like you."

"Oh," Piper said again. There didn't seem to be much else to say.

It was a first for her, too. Not her first kiss, not her first kiss with a girl, not her first kiss with someone she loved, but a first. First whatever this was. First with Calypso.

"You should go sleep," Calypso said softly, touching her cheek just barely before letting her arms fall to her sides. "It's late."

"Yeah," Piper agreed, too dazed to offer anything valuable to the conversation. "I'll- I'll see you tomorrow?" It turned into a question on her, which she hadn't intended, but she did want the answer so she didn't try it again.

"Yes," Calypso said, smiling, "you will."

 **X**


	8. LIMINALITY

**Chapter 08:** LIMINALITY

Piper stumbled out into the night, crawled into her tent, and stared at the concave orange ceiling.

A hundred times, she relived it, looking for some clue as to what to do next.

Nothing.

She was still stranded. Now she was just stranded and unable to string two thoughts together, which wasn't helpful at all.

Eventually her mind, which had been skirting nervously around it, slowed down at last and looked at the thing she'd been avoiding.

She was the first. No one had ever loved Calypso back soon enough to say so in time.

Piper bit her lip, curled over on her side, and cried softly into her pillow for the girl who had watched love sail away over and over again and been alone for all the times in between.

She wondered if anyone else had ever cried for Calypso, or if this was a first too.

x

Piper slept through breakfast, having stayed up half the night chewing on things, then headed up to the cave at lunch. Calypso had asked Piper not to avoid her, so even though she had no idea what to say or do, she went.

Calypso wasn't there.

Somehow that possibility hadn't occurred to Piper, so she just stood there for a minute, dumbfounded.

Then, leaving the cave, she looked around, hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun. There, in the far distance: a streak of sienna against the hazy green. Calypso was standing on the beach at the bottom of the lawn, looking out over the water.

Piper went to her.

"This is where it usually lands," Calypso said when Piper arrived at her side. "The raft, I mean. I wonder why it never came for you. It should have been here a long, long time ago, but I've had my eye out for it. It definitely hasn't been here."

Piper shrugged. "There are lots of things about my being here that aren't typical," she pointed out. "I wasn't shipwrecked, for one thing. My plane just came down like it was called here; there wasn't anything wrong with it until I landed and the propellers snapped. Two, I wasn't injured, even though part of the script says I was supposed to need healing when I washed ashore. I didn't have any pressing reason to leave, either, and you said your castaways always have one. Then there's the obvious, of course."

She gestured vaguely at herself, and Calypso giggled.

Piper continued. "Nothing about this has followed the usual course. I mean, it might come if you called it-"

"Piper," Calypso said.

"-But all told, I'm not surprised-"

"Piper," Calypso said again, urgently. She pointed out into the shallow bay.

There, tilting merrily across the gentle waves, came the raft. They watched in silence as it broke the water in a soft wake, making a beeline for them, until it eventually grated up on the grey shore and came to rest.

"Piper!" Calypso said, trance broken, turning to her and grasping her arms with the strength of desperation. "Piper, you have to go! Right now! It never stays long, you have to go right now or you'll be trapped here forever!"

All the words she could have said stuck in Piper's throat. She looked at Calypso's stricken, desperate face. She looked at the raft, weather-beaten and incongruous. She looked back at Calypso, then the raft again, the sky, the ground. Everything seemed to blur into nonsensicality.

"Piper," Calypso begged, "please, don't worry about me, just go. You don't owe me anything, you have people waiting for you, please-"

Piper thought, faster than she'd ever thought before. She thought about leaving, about drifting back home and reassuring her friends before they went to Tartarus looking for her. Didn't she owe it to them to come back? Didn't she owe it to her father?

She thought about leaving Calypso here on this island, alone again, heartbroken like she'd never been before. Thought about the fact that she still had no leverage, and no guarantee that she could find or make any on returning to the world.

It all felt so mockingly convenient, like something had waited for this moment - when everything would hurt the most - to offer her the way out. It felt... off, in a big way.

Even so, getting on the raft was still the best choice she had. It would be the right thing to do, considering all the feelings in balance. Calypso's heart couldn't be worth more than those of every other person who loved her, if such things could even be objectively weighed. If she stayed, her friends might get themselves killed trying to save her. Her father might give up on life entirely. She carried the weight of so many hearts. It would be callous of her to stay.

She should go back.

She should do the right thing.

Piper said, "No."

"No?" echoed Calypso, faintly puzzled. She made a futile pass at her tears with her sleeve but missed most of them. "What do you mean, no?"

"No," Piper repeated, more firmly. "No. Do you have an empty bottle or something? One with a lid?"

"I... yes?" Calypso said. "I can ask the pot for one. But what-"

Piper didn't answer her. There wasn't much time, if Calypso was right. She had to hurry. She couldn't waste another second.

She bolted up the lawn to her tent, dived in through the flaps and rifled frantically through her scattered belongings. She wasn't the neatest person, and she regretted that right now. It took thirty precious seconds to find what she was looking for. Bracing the paper on her knee, she scribbled down as much information as she dared, feeling every passing second pouring down into the drying ink. When she'd done enough, she signed it Love, Piper, rolled it up, and clawed her way back out into the cool sunshine.

Calypso was there already with a glass bottle in hand, empty but complete with lid. Piper snatched it from her with swift thanks, thrust the scrolled page through the neck, re-capped it, and thundered down the lawn towards the raft. It had already come loose and was drifting off on the silver ripples ten feet from shore.

Piper threw herself into the water, wading as fast as she could, cursing the water for slowing her legs.

The raft picked up speed, slipping out of her reach.

Desperate, Piper tossed the bottle and prayed to any god who might actually listen.

By some miracle - her aim had never been particularly good - the bottle landed at one edge of the raft and rolled to the other, coming to rest lengthwise three logs in, quite secure. Piper would've tied it down if she had the choice, but the raft was sailing off at quite a clip now. There was no way she could catch it now.

Wading back to shore, she stood dripping in the sand and watched it until it was out of sight. Calypso came to stand beside her, but stayed silent too until it disappeared over the horizon.

Then she sucked in a ragged breath and turned to Piper, clasping her arms with shaking fingers. "What have you done?" she whispered, tears rising in her eyes. "That was your only chance!"

"You don't know that," Piper said with all the confidence of a few minutes ago, though most of that was draining out of her through her feet into the sand even as she said it. She scrounged up a grin from somewhere. "Has anyone ever stayed before?"

"No, of course not!" Calypso cried. "If they had, they'd still be here!"

Piper frowned. "Huh?"

Calypso drew back, baffled. "Well, I mean, because- Wait, they didn't tell you?" she asked, wiping her widening eyes again, just as futile this time around.

Piper racked her brain for any clue as to what Calypso might be talking about. "No," she said at last. "I'm pretty sure they didn't, whatever it is you mean."

"Oh, gods," Calypso moaned, "I didn't offer it because I assumed, after you told me about your friends, that you already knew, and I didn't want to seem like I was pressuring you. You didn't even know. Oh, Piper, I'm sorry."

"An explanation would be really helpful right about now," Piper said wryly.

"You're immortal," Calypso burst out. "It's the one thing I'm allowed to offer my castaways to entice them. Anyone who agrees to stay gains immortality. The exact words as told to me were 'if one should refuse the raft and remain.' You just refused the raft. You remain. You'll remain until the world ends. You should have gone." She gave up on the tears, finally, letting them stream uninhibited down her messy face.

Piper walked ten steps, until there was grass under her feet instead of sand, and sat down very suddenly.

Calypso, following, kneeled in front of her, hands darting around without landing anywhere like she couldn't decide whether to hug Piper or slap her back to sensibility or put a cautious consoling hand on her head.

Immortal.

"Maybe it won't work," Piper said dimly. "I mean, lots of things about my coming here are different, right? Maybe this is different too."

"No," said Calypso immediately, pressing her hands to her eyes to stem the tears. "No, I felt it work. It wasn't actually bound to the curse, exactly. It was just assumed that anyone who came here would be cursed. The rest of it may or may not be working properly but there's nothing wrong with this part. It's going to hit you any minute, and I'm sorry, Piper, but I think it's probably going to hurt."

"How much?" Piper asked, looking up to meet Calypso's reddened eyes, and then she found out.

A lot.

She'd been through some pretty painful things in her life. That time she fell off a horse and broke her arm when she was six. Drowning in the Nymphaeum. Every bruise and laceration she'd taken in battle. She'd suffered, but not like this. Not ever like this.

It was like being rebuilt; taken apart piece and piece, each piece catalyzed in fire and put back together as something that belonged to life more deeply and powerfully than any mortal thing could. If she died, life would call her back, tell the story of her until she became real again. If she was unmade, she would be remade. Everything within her that was capable of any kind of permanent death or undoing was burned away and replaced.

It was very fast, but at the same time unbearably slow. It hurt more than Piper felt sure just dying would have, and she briefly wished she were doing that instead, if only to put an end to the pain. Human beings couldn't survive pain like that for long... but she became immortal even as she reached her limit, and so it couldn't kill her when she reached the point of wanting it to.

At last she came gasping to greater life.

She'd fallen over at some point, she realized, and Calypso was wrapped around her as if physically trying to hold her to the ground, and they were both covered in bits of grass and crying.

"That," Piper gasped into Calypso's damp collarbone, "sucked."

"I'm sorry," Calypso wailed, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"

"Shhh." Piper squeezed the breath out of her until she stopped, then relented. "Shh," she said again, "it's okay, you thought I knew and you would've warned me if you knew I didn't, it's not your fault."

Sobbing, Calypso clung to her, unable to get any other words out.

Piper stroked her hair, trying to find her emotional feet.

Immortal.

Regardless of whether or not she found a way off this island, she would live forever. She thought she'd understood what immortality felt like, yesterday, when she was thinking about how Ogygia made her feel. She had understood no more than a corner of it, only the bright surface of the deep, deep lake.

Only now did she realize how big time was, and how small the planet. Of course it had seemed endless when she'd only had eighty years or so at best to explore it, and other things to do besides exploring. Now she really could see everything, then go back around again as often as she liked to watch things changing. Everything would become familiar, eventually.

When she got off the island.

If she got off the island.

Now, at last, she was beginning to understand how cruel Calypso's punishment had been. It was one thing to imprison a mortal for the rest of their life. They would die eventually and be free - sooner, if they worked at it - and it wouldn't even take that long if they didn't. Calypso could die, if she chose, but if she did she would end up in Tartarus for a while and then reform right where she'd been. There was no escape, not for an immortal like her.

"Did you ever die," Piper asked, hoarsely. She hadn't really meant to, it just slipped out, but now it was out there so all she could do was wait for the answer.

Calypso drew back, sat on her knees. "How did you think I knew what Tartarus was like?" she said quietly.

Piper shrugged with one shoulder. "I figured you'd heard about it. I made an assumption I shouldn't have. I'm sorry."

"It's all right," Calypso said, fiddling with her hands and looking down. Then she sighed. "I died twice. The first time after my first castaway left me. The second time a thousand years later, between visitors, when I thought I'd be alone forever and needed for something, anything to change. That was quite some time ago. I might have gone again after this, if you'd left, just for the distraction."

Piper winced.

"I don't say that to make you feel bad," Calypso said softly. "I would have welcomed it, and it wouldn't have been permanent. You know that. Now, if you didn't before, you know."

"I didn't," Piper agreed. "I thought I did, I thought I knew what it meant to be immortal, but I had no idea. I probably still have only the smallest idea. I'm sure I'll come to understand the full weight of it in time... looks like I'll have plenty of that."

Calypso threw herself forward and wrapped her arms around Piper's neck. "You should have gone," she whispered in Piper's ear, intimate and painful.

Piper clenched her jaw, her fists. "I said no, and I meant no," she said. "I wasn't going to leave you like that. I wasn't going to be some tool used to hurt you. I'll find some other way."

"Piper-"

"I already meant to save you," Piper interrupted, "but now that I understand a little better what you've been going through all this time, there's no way I'm going to leave you here alone even if someone comes to get me now somehow. No way. My answer would be the same, if the raft came back now."

"What if it comes back in fifty years, or five hundred?" Calypso asked.

Piper shrugged. "I don't know. I can't answer that because I don't know what will change between now and then. Maybe we'll hate each other and I'll be desperate to leave, maybe we'll have found a way off the island by then, there's no way to know so there's no point. Right now, as I am today, that's my answer, and I'll stick with it until I have reason to change it. Okay?"

"Piper," Calypso said, "You're right, and now I don't know what to say."

Grinning, Piper reached out and pinched her cheek. "You could look a little happier," she suggested. "And don't worry so much. I said I'd find another way, and I will. You're allowed to be happy that I didn't leave. I promise."

Calypso's arms tightened around her neck. Piper carefully put her hands on Calypso's robed waist and slid them up her back, slow and exploratory.

Calypso drew back just far enough to kiss her, gently but with great intent, leaning on Piper hard enough that she fell backwards into the grass. "I'm happy," she said when it ended. "I'm so happy I can't even begin to find the words. But I'm sad for you, Piper, and I'll worry whatever you say. You've sacrificed a lot, more than you might even realize yet, and it'll hit you eventually, and I don't want you to hate me when it does. So let's go up to the cave and have something to eat, and wait for things to settle. All right?"

It was the use of the same word she'd thought of after Calypso's confession that made the world real for Piper again. Settle. An alchemical reaction had just made something new of her. Of course it was wise to let it cool before changing anything else. Of course.

"Okay," she said, and let Calypso pull her up to her feet.

She had no trouble balancing, but her feet felt somehow unfamiliar to her. The same shape, wearing the same shoes, but somehow new and strange. Preoccupied with that, she followed Calypso up to the cave at a slow, uncertain wobble.

Calypso produced vegetable stew from the pot, comfortingly familiar. Piper chewed her way through three full bowls of it, not exactly hungry but fascinated with the fact that this was the first meal of her new and endless life.

What would her loved ones' reactions be, she wondered. Would her father be glad that his daughter would live forever, or sad that she would miss out on the immediacy of humanity, the desperate heights inspired by the proximity of the end? Would Annabeth be amazed and happy for her, or estranged by the new and massive difference between them? Would Leo-

She had to stop herself, there, because it was too much all of a sudden. Her little brother would grow old and die without her, and she would be changeless, twenty-three and blessed with divine beauty forever. She would hold his hand in his final days and people would assume she was his granddaughter.

If she got off the island. Big if.

If she didn't, he would grow old and die and she wouldn't be there at all. She'd watch it through Katoptris, if she could bear it. If not, she'd just watch the birds and dragonflies, the changing sky, and pretend the world she couldn't touch wasn't real anymore.

Maybe he'd go to Tartarus tomorrow. Maybe they all would, and she'd watch them crawl across the wet expanses of blood and muscle, through the vast body of the dead god, doomed to find nothing and die amid the stench and heat.

If anyone could make it back, her friends could - some of them already had - but maybe twice was too much to ask of luck. They wouldn't all make it back, surely. There were no real miracles in this world. There was only fate and leverage and unusual luck, and luck was too fickle for this.

 _I should have gone,_ she thought.

Then again, fiercely: _No._

There had been no right answer back there, standing on the sand with the lake murmuring and the raft waiting. There had been two wrong choices, two awful, unconscionable choices, and she'd chosen one because there was no way out, and she'd chosen it with her heart. Someone had told her once that her feelings were the heart of her power, and in that crystallized moment of decision, a knife edge with hell to one side and hell to the other, she'd trusted to that.

Regret wouldn't help anything, she told herself. If she'd gone, she'd have regretted going as much as she regretted staying, so there was no helping it.

She thought about her bottle, her scrap of paper and its scribbled words curled up inside those fragile glass walls, making its way across the wide iron sea. What if it never arrived? What if the wind kicked up and the waves rose and the bottle rolled right off the raft and spent the next century aimlessly wandering the empty grey stretches, until it met something else as hard as it was and broke? What if it arrived but no one found it, because it had no legs to walk with?

What if there was no other way?

The vegetable stew suddenly churned in her stomach, souring. She put a hand over her belly.

"Are you all right?" Calypso asked, the first words either of them had spoken in almost an hour.

I don't lie when I can help it, Piper thought, trying to hold to herself as she'd been in even this small way. Just for now, until she found solid ground. "Not really," she said, "but it's not something you need to feel guilty for. I'm just adjusting, okay?"

Calypso nodded, looking troubled.

Piper sent her dishes off, said good night, and went out to her tent.

She'd barely slept the night before, and it didn't seem like she was going to get much more tonight. But then, maybe she didn't really need it anymore. It would probably still feel good, as eating did for Calypso, but she couldn't die of sleep deprivation any more than Calypso could die of starvation.

She lay awake and tried to feel time passing.

 **X**

 **A/N:** Immortality being painful came about as a result of a conversation with Radycat, so she gets some more credit here.


	9. WINTER

**Chapter 09:** WINTER

Autumn deepened, began to think about winter.

The branches thinned in the sharpening wind, became bare grey fingers against the paler sky. Bathing in the river became a painful, shivery chore. The island, always quiet, seemed to coil downwards into a dark and pensive silence. The sky closed in and sank down on them like a blanket.

The long dark was coming, and every stone and root knew it.

Piper reluctantly gathered up what she needed, tied down the rest, and moved into the cave. Calypso welcomed her with a sympathetic kiss on the cheek and directed her. The back section of the cave wasn't large, but there was enough room for her to set up her bedroll and leave a little walkway so that neither of them would trip over each other when they went for bathroom breaks in the middle of the night.

For the first night, Piper didn't sleep at all, too aware of Calypso's soft breathing six feet to her left. She got up black-eyed the next morning and went for a long, long walk.

When she came back, Calypso was in the gardens, harvesting the last of the tubers and tying rough grey sheets over the beds to hold the soil in when the worst of the winds came.

Silently, Piper knelt down to help her, and together they made ready for the winter.

The daylight hours were growing short. She fell asleep in darkness and woke up in deeper darkness, lying still until the dawn came and gave her permission to be awake. She could feel Calypso doing the same beside and above her, and they were silent and quiescent together beneath the crystal ceiling.

The fire in the hearth burned all day now, and the door was draped with thick layers of wool and canvas to keep the cold out.

They spoke little, because both being immortal now, they knew there would be time for conversation when they were both ready, and Piper wasn't ready yet.

Eventually the winds did come, howling about the hills and cypresses, bladed and soulless and full of fury.

They hid inside, eating whatever warm things the pot would make for them, drinking tea, wrapping blankets around themselves and each other. There was no light but the fire on the hearth when the sky lowered and went black, and so they were in the dark for months.

It was easy to sleep, and so they slept a lot, dreaming in the dark.

Not always kind dreams.

x

Piper came half-awake, gasping, trying fruitlessly to clear the black waters of the Nymphaeum from her lungs. The fire glittering in the crystals overhead seemed to her to be the vanishing light of the well's mouth, receding from her, and she cried out in desperation.

Calypso was at her side then, suddenly, wide awake though her breathing had been even and deep not moments before. 

"Piper?" she said softly. There was no room for loudness in the deep silence of the winter night; even this was almost too much sound for the shrunken spaces of the hibernating world.

"I'm all right," Piper croaked. "All demigods have nightmares, you know, it's nothing special. I had lots while I was out in my tent. You don't have to worry about it."

Calypso touched the side of her face with just the tips of her fingers, delicate like a ghost. They slid downwards and back, curling into the edge of Piper's hair.

It wasn't a question or an answer, just a very gentle statement. _I'm here._

Piper bit her lip and leaned forward until her forehead rested on Calypso's shoulder, turning her face inwards to inhale the cinnamon scent of her hair and throat.

"I'm sorry for waking you," she murmured. "Thanks for checking on me. Go back to sleep."

Calypso reached down and took her hand, tangling their fingers together. "Come with me," she said.

Piper hesitated a moment, then gathered up her blanket in her free arm and followed.

There was room enough on Calypso's wide bed for the both of them, but they stayed close together anyway, facing each other in the dim red firelight.

Again, Calypso caressed the side of her face, then scooted close enough to press her forehead against Piper's, warm and real, an anchor against the lingering phantoms of her dreams.

Piper closed her eyes and slept better.

x

When the cabin fever eventually got to be too much, they went out walking hand in hand along the beach, disturbing the thin carpet of snow. The edges of the lake were adorned with thin curlicues of ice, reaching out into the restless silver of the deeper waters. Everything smelled sweet and clear despite the muddy grey skies.

Winter had its own charm, Piper admitted, though she'd always been a summer girl. There was real peace in the silence and somnolence.

It was good. Just what she needed.

She'd looked in Katoptris a few times since refusing the raft a month ago, and it had shown her nothing she wanted to see, but nothing to panic over either.

Her friends might think she was in Tartarus, but if they did, they weren't charging off to challenge the entire underworld just yet. It was possible that it hadn't occurred to them, she supposed, though she didn't believe Annabeth would miss the possibility.

Maybe they'd figured out where she actually was and didn't know what to do now.

She hoped it was that, but she had no way to know for sure, and Katoptris was never all that compliant to her demands. If she pushed too hard it just wandered off elsewhere, showing her nothing but mist or falling snow.

For now it was enough that they weren't making any suicidal charges. They might be waiting for some opportune time, but it wasn't now, and that meant she had time to get a message to them.

She still had hopes for her little letter in a bottle, but she didn't want it to be the only egg in her basket.

Unfortunately, no other opportunities had presented themselves since. No gods had visited, no Iris calls had worked. She was still completely incommunicado as far as she could tell.

It was frustrating, it was still an immediate reason for anxiety, but after weeks of finding nothing to do to resolve it, the pain had dulled to a less cruel edge. Familiar pains hurt differently than new ones, and this had become one of the former. A more endurable pain, if not any less terrible.

Now and again, when it felt right, she kissed Calypso, or Calypso kissed her. They never let it go further than that.

They hadn't talked about it, or verbally agreed on anything, but Piper knew they were both waiting for freedom before daring more. They had to know for sure the curse was gone first. Calypso might have let her castaways take her to bed, sometimes, but that was different in so many ways from this.

No, better to wait. They had all of eternity, after all. There was no hurry, even if sometimes it was a little hard to remember that.

They waited out the winter together, like the whole world was on hold until the spring, one long lightless night where there was nothing to do but sleep.

The night after her nightmare, Calypso had caught her hand when she went to lie down in her bedroll and pulled her into the big bed beside her. Since then, Piper hadn't bothered with the floor. It was warmer with Calypso curled up under her chin, and the bed was much softer, and it was so much less lonely.

For a week or two, they amused themselves doing each other's hair up into increasingly improbable confections. Piper's hair was getting longer; there was enough of it now to braid properly, if one were so inclined. Calypso's was still naturally more fun, being long enough to do just about anything with. Piper spent hours plaiting endless intricate patterns of braids into it, and Calypso sat still for it with the learned patience of millennia of boredom.

They made snow angels, and crop circles out of footprints in the powder, and Calypso started to teach her how to use the magic loom. That was slow going, as Piper had no talent for it whatsoever, but she learned, because they had time and she had nothing better to do.

Piper took up singing again, her self-consciousness fading as Calypso started feeling less like an audience and more like a participant.

On many days, they just did nothing at all, lying together looking at the glittering ceiling like it was all there was left of the world.

Piper's first season of immortality was a long one.

x

Spring came like a whisper, almost inaudible beneath the ponderous weight of the winter's silence.

The wind softened, just slightly, and the sky rose.

It was enough for Calypso to know, though Piper wouldn't have noticed that early if not for Calypso tearing out out of the cave door into the snow in her stockings, staring skyward and twirling with her arms out.

"Listen," she said, exalted, " _listen,_ the world is waking up!"

Piper listened, and heard: the soft shifting of the thaw, the creaking of the warming branches, the gentleness of the wind.

"Is spring your favourite season?" she asked, curious.

"Yes," said Calypso, "and no, not exactly. I have no favourite, I don't think. I just like the changing between. When I can feel the new one coming, the old one bowing out. I love that."

"I know what you mean," said Piper, honestly. The heat of summer had been her favourite for years, because she could never seem to get Khione's ice out of her bones, but she did understand what Calypso meant. There was a rush of excitement when the first wind of the coming season swept across the land, even if the coming season was her least favourite. There was a euphoria to the change itself, to the liminality between one state and the next.

"I thought you might," said Calypso, beaming, glorious in the first rays of sunshine spearing through the grey murk overhead.

Piper drew a breath, a deep one. Spring. Beginnings. The first of many. "Hey, listen," she said. "I think I'm okay."

"With what?" Calypso asked, suddenly serious. "Which part?"

"Most of it, I guess," said Piper vaguely. "Not with not being able to talk to my friends and family. That part still sucks. But the rest... I wasn't sure how I felt for a while, or how I should feel. I kind of just had to let it settle. But I think it has now, and I think I'm okay."

Calypso trudged through the melting snow to her, catching her reddened hands. "Even if it's forever?"

Slowly, Piper nodded. "I think there are a lot worse places I could spend eternity, and not many better," she said. "And there's you. Nowhere else has you."

"That's true enough," said Calypso with a flashing grin, not making light of things, just making room for it.

Piper answered it, grateful. "So, yeah. Even if it's forever, here, I'm okay."

Calypso hugged her briefly around the middle. "I don't think it will be, for what it's worth," she said. "I feel like something is coming, and not just because it's spring. Something is going to change again. I'm sure of it."

"I hope you're right, and that it's a change for the better," Piper said, allowing that to cheer her up just a little bit.

"So do I," said Calypso.

Piper caught her hand, and they headed for the cave and dinner.

Liminality. The world in flux. She could feel it too, though she didn't have nearly as much sameness to contrast it against as Calypso did, so she hadn't thought much of it until it was pointed out, much like the beginnings of spring.

In a few months, her original year's vacation would be up. It was strange to think about, how her life had come to a fork in the road and reason had gone down one road and her soul the other. Somewhere out there the path she'd meant to follow still existed, untrod, expectant, neglected. Maybe there was a universe out there lying parallel to this one, like a page in the same book telling a different story, one where she'd made it over the ocean and gone about her merry way.

She wasn't in that story, but she didn't want to be, not anymore. In that story, Calypso was still alone, and Leo might still be trying to save her but without his heart in it, and Piper's life might be beautiful but that wrongness would underlie it, always, whether she thought much about it or not.

That may have been one fate, but this was another, and knowing what she knew now she would have chosen it again.

Even if she hadn't loved Calypso, she would have chosen this, because no one deserved to be alone the way Calypso had been alone.

Piper would have wanted to help anyway. She would have felt wrong in leaving anyway.

She'd followed her heart, and her heart would have led her here regardless.

Both choices before the raft had been wrong, but both had also been right. Either way, someone would have been hurt. Either way, someone would have been saved. It was a choice beyond her power, and so there was no reason to carry this much guilt for making it.

Piper ate her lasagna and tried her best to let it go. The anxiety would stay, she knew, because she loved the people she hadn't chosen, too, but guilt wouldn't help her reach them.

No regret, she told herself. No guilt. Not for this.

She watched Calypso experiencing vegetarian lasagna for the first time, eyes wide and delighted. Calypso, tasting new things because Piper was there. Calypso, not alone because Piper was there. Calypso, who would never be alone again because Piper would always be there.

No, not for this.

 **X**


	10. RETURN

**Chapter 10:** RETURN

Calypso had been right.

On the vernal equinox, it rained all night, and the rising sun cast a glorious semi-halo of colour across the western horizon. Piper, having slept the winter away, was already awake to see it, and Calypso was stirring in the kitchen behind her. There had been a dozen rainbows last year, when the rains were at their height, but they hadn 't meant anything with Iris away.

This one felt different.

Almost as soon as she registered the thought, three figures appeared on the south shore: one shining, one glittering, one dark. Visitors had come to Ogygia.

A few months ago, Piper would have pounded down the muddy sward to the shoreline where they waited and lost her breath on the way. As it was, she didn 't run, but neither did she dawdle.

Calypso caught up halfway down, eyes wide, and linked her hand into Piper's. She looked hopeful, and afraid, and Piper understood the why of both of those. She squeezed Calypso's hand.

"Don't worry," she said.

"I'm not," Calypso replied, but the tension around her eyes only relaxed a little.

The first goddess, Piper recognized. She had long black hair, olive skin, and eyes like warm tea on a winter's day. Golden wings rose from her back; Piper had never seen those in person, but she'd heard about them.

Iris of the rainbow, back from the depths of hell at last.

Beside her stood what must have been the reason for her abrupt abandonment of her duties: a goddess who could have been her mirror image, but for the colourful iridescence of the wings rising from her own back and the weary lines about her ageless eyes.

On Iris' left and two steps back stood Nico di Angelo, looking exhausted but not unhappy. The years hadn't made him handsome, but there was a certain beauty to the asymmetrical angularity of his face. He was much taller now, as tall as Piper was, but as rail-thin as ever.

In her hands, Iris held a familiar glass bottle. It was empty.

"Message delivered," she said, "sorry for the delay."

Piper nearly collapsed under the sudden wave of overwhelming relief that hit her. Her people knew where she was. Her father knew she was safe. No one would be venturing into Tartarus to rescue her, not now.

She was still trapped, and they would still grow old without her if she didn't find a way to fix that, but they wouldn't die for her. It meant so much.

"Thank you," she said through her tears. "Apology accepted. I'm sure you had a good reason."

Iris looked sidelong at the goddess standing beside her, and there was so much love in her that Piper had to blink against the glow.

"Yes," she said. "Piper, this is my sister, Arke."

Arke swept a neat curtsy.

Piper nodded back, unsure of what to do or what to say. She didn't know this goddess. She didn't know this story.

Calypso did.

In an eyeblink, she was across the bare paces of spring grass between them and hugging the life out of Arke, who was hugging her back with equal or greater desperation. Iris watched, bright-eyed and trembling a little as if having a hard time containing her joy.

Nico moved quietly to her side. "I'm sorry, Piper," he said, laying a hand on her elbow. "I should have suspected."

She furrowed her brow, turning from the emotional spectacle to meet his dark eyes. "Suspected? Suspected what?"

"That she was plotting something. It didn't occur to me to think about the consequences of both Iris and myself being out of communications range at the same time, or to wonder why she waited until you finalized your plans to tell Iris where her sister was."

"She?" Piper asked, but she already knew. The pieces were falling into place in her mind, and she heard the distant roaring of her blood in her ears, the howl of rising rage.

Nico frowned as if he'd expected to be obvious to her, because it was. "Aphrodite," he said.

Piper saw it now. The inexplicable downwards spiral of her enchanted Kitfox, all the ways she didn't fit the pattern, the convenience of Nico and Iris being incommunicado so that she would have no one but Calypso to talk to for months.

This was her mother's doing.

"How did I miss this?" she asked out loud, but it was mostly aimed at herself.

Nico answered anyway. "You wouldn't normally expect your mother to strand you on an island in the literal middle of nowhere for a year," he said.

Piper rolled her eyes. "Yes, you would, if your mother was my mother. You know she built the curse on this island, with Hecate's help. When we asked for her help petitioning Zeus, a while back, she said it wouldn't be that easy, and then got this crafty look on her face. It was years ago, but I should have remembered that the second I landed here."

Nico looked a little lost. He shrugged. "If you say so."

"So what's the deal with her?" Piper asked, jerking her head towards the strange goddess.

"You don't recognize the name?"

Piper shook her head.

Nico drew a breath. "They're twins. Back during the Titan War, Iris ran messages for the gods, and Arke ran them for the Titans. When the gods won, Zeus punished those who had sided with the Titans. As you know."

Piper looked at Calypso. Yes, she knew, and now she understood Calypso's joy a little better.

"Arke was exiled, too, but not to an island. For her more active role in the war, she was sent to the deepest reaches of Tartarus, where no one could find her or hear her call for help. Her wings were torn off and given to Peleus and Thetis, who later gave them to their son, Achilles. She spent three thousand years wandering the catacombs, unable to find her way out, drinking marrow and flame to survive."

Horrified, Piper stared at him. She had no response to that. Three thousand years on an isolated island was bad enough. Three thousand years in the calcified innards of a comatose god, where nothing grew and no light shone? She tried to wrap her mind around that and failed.

Nico continued. "When Achilles died, he brought her wings with him to the underworld. She felt them, and followed their pull. It took her a very long time to escape the catacombs, even with that to guide her, but five years ago she made it to the surface and climbed to the highest point of Tartarus. From there, she called out to her wings, and Achilles answered, drawing her upwards to where he was. She hated him, at first, but that didn't last."

The shape of the story began to coalesce for Piper. "She started to have feelings for him," she guessed, and Nico's grimace proved her right. "Unrequited," she guessed further, and Nico nodded. "My mother would have felt that."

"Yes," Nico confirmed. "She felt it, and realized that she could use it. Your mother may be the goddess of love, Piper, but she can be very cold."

"I know."

A sudden swirl of wind behind them announced the arrival of another visitor. Piper didn't have to turn around.

"It's rude to gossip behind people's backs," Aphrodite said, all injured innocence.

Piper rounded on her. "I really don't think you have the moral high ground here, Mom," she said, deadly soft. "You owe me an explanation. You owe _us_ an explanation. Start talking."

Aphrodite wrinkled her nose as if she found Piper's wrath distasteful. "You wanted the curse broken, did you not?"

Calypso, having apparently gotten her fill of hugging Arke, came up at Piper's side, glorious hair crackling dangerously. "What does that have to do with any of this?"

"Why, it's simple," Aphrodite said, stroking the long black fall of her hair and preening a little. She was beautiful today, golden-skinned and black-eyed and regally tall. She was always beautiful. Her beauty was never kind to the onlooker. "Real love takes time."

When she saw that none of the listeners was following her to the apparently obvious conclusion, she heaved a sigh and crossed her arms. "The key to the curse," she continued impatiently. "Sweet Calypso had to fall in love."

Calypso furrowed her russet brows. "I don't understand," she said. "I've fallen in love dozens of times. If that was all it took-"

Aphrodite made a face and interrupted. "No," she said, waving a hand. "No, you haven't, not the way I mean. There's love, and there's _love._ I cursed you to feel immediate and unnaturally persistent infatuation with anyone the Fates sent you, whether you would have loved them on your own or not, and I built it so that said infatuation would preclude any real feelings you could have had. Like filling the page with nonsense before a love story could be written on it."

Piper had been wrong. She had thought that Calypso might have loved her companions on her own, that the Fates had chosen the best for her. She had _wanted_ to think that. Had wanted to believe Calypso hadn't just been a convenient field clinic for wounded demigods who fell out of the sky in this general area. She had wanted to believe, but she had been wrong, and she could hardly breathe through the pain of that.

"Then," Calypso started, faltering.

Piper tightened her grip on Calypso's hand, and felt Calypso lean hard into her shoulder, as desperate for support as Piper was to give it.

"None of what I've felt is real? None of it has _ever_ been real?"

Aphrodite smiled. It was not a gentle thing. "Almost none of it," she corrected, almost gleeful. "The curse, as I just said, applied to anyone the Fates sent to you."

Piper caught on, and dragged in a huge breath. "But the Fates didn't send me," she said. " _You_ did."

Aphrodite's smile widened into the grin of a wolf with a corpse at its feet. "Yes," she agreed. "I did."

Calypso looked up at Piper with black eyes full of stars.

Piper nearly lost her balance. She had thought Calypso's eyes were too big for her before, too deep, but they had been dull and shallow compared to what they were now: an entire abyssal sky. Piper thought she could drift for years and see nothing but wonders.

"If the curse didn't apply to Piper," Calypso said, her voice as soft as the wind in the midnight peach blossoms, "then-"

"You love her," Aphrodite confirmed. "You love her, truly and freely, and she loves you. This was the only way to break the curse I built. I was angry when I made it, and meant for the key to be impossible. I never anticipated how I would regret it, how all your false loves would itch at my insides."

Piper frowned. "If you regretted it so much, why didn't you do this earlier?"

"You assume that I could have," Aphrodite said. "I needed several things to coincide, and they never have before."

"What things?"

Aphrodite turned to glance at the twins, then looked back to Piper. "First, of course, I needed a perfect match," she said. "Those are rarer than you might think. I needed someone Calypso would love on her own, without any magical interference whatsoever. I needed someone who would love Calypso back, with the same conditions. I needed someone who would give Calypso the time and understanding she needed, and then someone who would choose compassion for the person in front of them over the theoretical greater good, when the time came. To be blunt, Piper, I needed you."

"What else?" Piper asked, stubbornly ignoring all the feelings she was having about everything Aphrodite had said so far. She needed to understand the whole before she could decide what to feel about any of what made it up.

"She needed time," Nico cut in before Aphrodite could continue. "She needed to give you enough uninterrupted time for things to take their course. You had to be cut off from outside concerns so that you would have nothing to distract you, and you couldn't be rescued too early. If you had been able to send an Iris message, if I had been able to tell everyone you weren't in the underworld and narrowed down the possibilites, you would have been located much earlier than this. So she held onto her knowledge of Arke's whereabouts until it was useful to her."

Aphrodite pouted, but tilted her head to acknowledge that. "I took every precaution," she agreed.

"You let my father think I was dead," Piper said quietly. Dangerously. "You let my friends grieve for me. I worried that they would go to Tartarus to save me, that they would get themselves _killed_ for me. You want me to believe that was necessary?"

"I would never have let them go to Tartarus," Aphrodite protested, but she looked uncomfortable for the first time. "As for your father, it couldn't be helped. If he had known where you were, he would have rallied your friends and they would have pestered the gods into action. I needed everyone to be in the dark. Those I couldn't keep in the dark, those who could see where you were with a thought, I swore to silence."

Piper abruptly remembered the baffling scene she'd glimpsed in Katoptris all those months ago, of Aphrodite's urgent discussions with various other gods and their grudging nods of acquiescence.

She felt a little sick.

"You could have just asked," she said.

Aphrodite looked blank.

Piper clarified. "You wanted to save Calypso. I didn't know her, but Leo wanted that too, and so did Percy, and they're my friends. If you had told me what you wanted, I would have probably agreed to try anyway, and you wouldn't have had to make everyone else I care about suffer. You could have just _asked._ It's not like knowing I was here to seduce her would have been that much different from believing I was _cursed_ to."

That clearly hadn't occurred to Aphrodite, by the look on her face. Maybe it wasn't in her nature to do things the simple way. Maybe it was part of the way gods were made that everything had to be a story with them, a convoluted drama with a contrived role for every player.

Piper hated it. She hated it, and she very nearly hated her mother.

She was almost too angry to _feel_ angry; it was more of a state of being than a mere emotion at this point. Every cell in her body was a tiny sea of rage contained by the thinnest of walls.

Calypso's iron grip on her hand held her down. "I won't thank you," she said, very quietly. "I hope you don't expect me to."

Aphrodite let out a soft, rueful breath. "No," she said. "I don't. For what it's worth, I learned my lesson. I never laid this curse on anyone else after you."

"That's not worth much," Calypso said, "but I'm glad anyway."

Piper didn't understand how she could be so calm. Three thousand years of exile and false love and abandonment, and she had nothing to say to its architect? Nothing at all?

As if she sensed Piper's feelings, Calypso turned to her. "I _was_ angry," she said, to Aphrodite and Piper both. "I was, for a long time, at the beginning. Then again whenever a new person came, and especially so when Piper first arrived. But I'm not good at it. I don't know how to hold onto it. I should be angry, I know, but I... I don't need vengeance. I don't. I just want to be free. Am I free now, Aphrodite?"

Piper's mother opened her mouth, then closed it and bit her lip.

"Am I not?" Calypso asked, even more softly.

"The curse is broken," Aphrodite said reluctantly. "But the exile itself was not my doing. That was Zeus, and I don't have the power to undo that without his assent."

"Then call him down," Piper said. Her own voice sounded distant to her, much more calm and reasonable than she felt. If her outsides were to match her insides right now, the grass around her feet would be on fire. "I don't care what you have to do. Call in every favour you're owed. I'll do the same. I-" Her voice broke, suddenly, betraying her into tears. "There's a world out there, a great big world that Calypso hasn't seen any of in three thousand years. I want to show it to her. You owe us this much. _Call him down_."

Aphrodite looked thoughtful, one strong black brow arched high. "You _are_ owed a lot of favours," she mused. "And if I ask, there are some who will answer, either because they're indebted to me or because they have also wished to see Calypso freed. I do not know if this will work, but I will try. For you. For the both of you."

She turned westwards and faced the empty sky, where a few clouds drifted. She said nothing, but something rolled off her into the air that was clearly a communication, even if it wasn't, strictly speaking, sound.

A summoning.

After a few moments, the placid drifts of cloud suddenly roiled, blackening into storm with unnatural speed. Aphrodite scowled, and the demanding pulse rippled through the air from her once again.

"I will not," the thunder roared, "be summoned like a lowly wind spirit, Aphrodite! How dare you!"

Calypso suddenly let loose her grip on Piper's hand. Piper looked at her and saw something new: a determined fire in her eyes, in the line of her jaw. Calypso never allowed herself to spend this kind of energy on things she saw as hopeless. That she was afire now meant she no longer thought _this_ was hopeless. Piper's heart leapt.

"Oathbreaker," Calypso called, clear and strong.

Zeus paused mid-word and turned to look at her, forgetting his wrath with Aphrodite momentarily. "Who insults me?"

Calypso audibly swallowed, but held her ground. "One whom you have likewise insulted," she answered. "You know who I am, just as I know you: Zeus of the lightning, Zeus of the golden sword, watcher of the sea havens. My gaoler. Years ago, you pardoned me as a boon to Poseidon Sea-king's youngest son. You knew that he meant for you to grant me my freedom, and yet I am not free. Thus I name you oathbreaker."

The storm twisted overhead, black and green with the promise of destruction. "I do not feel the need to deal generously with traitors," Zeus snapped.

"How could I betray one to whom I never swore loyalty?" Calypso challenged, fists clenched at her sides. "I loved my father, and cleaved to his side as any child would, but I took up no weapons for his cause, raised no hand against you or your allies. I was no threat! I understood your choice to exile me at the time, considering my loyalties, but-" She cut off, strangled by sudden tears.

"You didn't have to curse her," Piper continued in her stead, glad for the chance to vent her own fury. "The exile was punishment enough. More than enough. Besides, the war has been over for three thousand years, and you _pardoned_ her, how can you possibly justify keeping her locked up-"

Lightning struck one of the oaks on the western side of the island with an earsplitting crack. Piper's mouth closed with a click and stayed shut despite her efforts.

"I have had enough," Zeus said, sounding abruptly bored. "You are all thorns in my side. Perhaps I'll exile the lot of you, and you can keep this mouthy little Titan company for the rest of eternity."

"You can't possibly think the other gods will stand for that," Iris put in, having been silent for the entirety of the exchange thus far. "There are three goddesses and two well-loved demigods here, including a son of Hades. I've always been loyal to you, and have no plan to defy you, but you have to know this won't work."

Zeus' face was red with fury, and the storm was a swirling cyclone overhead clearly preparing to reach for the ground, but he said nothing.

"I won't stand for it either," said a new voice. "Calypso deserves her freedom. I've said as much many a time. Besides, my son would never let me hear the end of it if I knuckled under now."

Everyone turned to look; it was Hephaestus. Aphrodite hadn't called Zeus alone.

Calypso's face brightened noticeably. Hephaestus had visited her many times over the centuries; one of the very few to care enough to do so.

"Ditto," said a voice that sounded like sun and salt and the fathomless deep. Poseidon, looking more godly than usual despite his casual tone. No cargo shorts or sandals today; he wore a clean white chiton and his beard and hair were cascades of sun-dried seaweed. "Piper and Nico are both friends of my own son, and I owe Piper a favour or two myself. As does your wife, as I recall."

Zeus looked fit to explode, but one by one other gods were appearing on the grassy expanse, summoned by Aphrodite or just drawn by the ruckus. Piper recognized many of the gods she'd helped through their integrations. Zeus was greater than any one god – greater than any random five put together, even – but this many in one place was enough to give even the lord of heaven himself pause.

Every favour she was owed, she'd said. She had meant it, and Aphrodite had called them, and here they were.

And then, at last, the final nail in the coffin: a well of subterranean shadow opened up on the grass, and Hades himself emerged from it. He said nothing, only glared at Zeus, but the message was clear enough.

Nico and his father were... closer, these days. Hades did not stir from his kingdom for much of anything, even now, but he would not sit still for a threat to his son from his greatest enemy. On his own, he could not stand against Zeus any more than the others could, but with this crowd to ally with... Zeus was very powerful, but he was not invincible.

"I know you don't like it," Piper said to the lord of the gods. "You're not great at losing, or changing your mind. It's part of your nature. But this is wrong. You have to know by now that this is wrong. You knew what Percy meant when you agreed to it, and you copped out."

The last word, as was fitting, belonged to Calypso. She didn't raise her voice, but it carried.

"Piper is right. You have betrayed the spirit of that agreement, if not the letter, to serve your own petty grudge," she said. "You are the god of justice. You have always hated liars, prevaricators and oathbreakers worst of all. Can you bear the strain of being one yourself?"

A weighty silence fell over the gathering and pressed down for interminable seconds, suffocating.

The storm overhead faltered.

And then, just like that, Piper realized that this was their victory. Zeus was just stalling, looking for a way out of it and not finding one. The eyes of well over half the denizens of Olympus were fixed on him, and he was stuck.

"No," admitted Zeus resentfully. "I cannot."

The sky itself seemed to heave a defeated sigh. The storm unravelled like a pulled skein, dissipating into a scattered fan of cirrus ribbons.

Zeus waved his hand, and with that simple gesture, something nameless and ubiquitous loosened and fell away. Even Piper - who had not been bound the same way - felt the release of it, felt the entire island suddenly draw in a surprised breath along with Calypso beside her.

" _Oh_ ," said Calypso, and burst into tears.

Piper threw her arms around Calypso's shoulders and engulfed her in a fierce, triumphant hug. Calypso returned it, clinging to Piper's waist like her newfound freedom was drowning her.

"I hope you're all satisfied," Zeus muttered sulkily. "I'm leaving. I don't want to see any of your faces for the next hundred years." With an anticlimactic snap, he vanished.

Most of the other gods went with him, having repaid the favours they owed. Aphrodite and the twins stayed, as did Hecate and Hephaestus.

Calypso drew in a series of deep breaths, trying to find some calm in the maelstrom. Piper had none to lend, but they both had to hold it together right now.

There was much to discuss.

 **X**


	11. FREEDOM

**Chapter 11:** FREEDOM

Somehow, there was no hurry.

Calypso was free after three millennia of exile; Piper would have expected her to want to get off the island as soon as divinely possible. She would have, because she still thought like a mortal being. Calypso did not.

"Hecate," Calypso said calmly as the small knot of remaining gods and demigod tightened around her. "I have a question."

"Ask," said Hecate. "If I have an answer, I will give it."

Calypso gestured around herself, taking in the muddy, dreary corpus of the island. "If I leave," she said, "what happens to this?"

Hecate raised her eyebrows. "You worry for your gaol?"

"My home," Calypso corrected. "Zeus may have intended it to be a prison, and I did hate to be _confined_ to it, but all the same it is my home, and I love it. It has been kind to me, and we have been companions for a very long time. He has taken enough from me. If it can be avoided, I will not lose the last of what was mine to his final spite."

Piper understood immediately. Not from personal experience, though, just from her understanding of Calypso and her lesser familiarity with the island. The island had its own soul, mute and gentle, and though it had been tasked with imprisonment, it had been as generous as it could with its prisoner. The peach blossoms, the sweet grasses, the cheery if tuneless singing of the lorikeets, the clear waters of its creeks; all these were gifts to cheer the heart of its lonely and beloved charge.

Calypso would not want to come back to it for quite some time, Piper thought, but she _would_ want to come back to it, eventually. When she was overwhelmed by how the world had changed and grown, when she was weary and needed rest, when she needed to escape from something that could follow her most anywhere, she would come home, and it would protect her.

Piper was very glad Calypso had thought to ask. How many times had Calypso pictured this? Had she made a list of things to consider should she ever gain her freedom? Or was it simply that her eyes were always looking out across the millennia rolling out before her feet, and so the horizon in the far distance was clear to her?

Hecate made a humming sound, then went gracefully to her knees and put her hands into the stiff brown winter grasses, closing her eyes as she communicated with the island's silent genius loci. After a handful of minutes, she stood up and brushed the broken bits of grass off her knees.

"It says it has never belonged to Zeus," she announced, "and that he cannot therefore turn it against you against your will. He chose it at random, for its remoteness, but it existed before him and was never conquered. It does not belong to you, either, but it is willing to, if you will have it. It would like to be your... there is no word in any language for this, but when a land loves its people and its people love their land, it becomes... part of them, in a way. They carry it with them wherever they go, and it holds their spirit until they return. It would like to be that for you, if you wish it."

Calypso bit her lip, fighting back fresh tears. She knelt in the grass and sank her hands into it, as Hecate had done. Her magic was different, she couldn't speak to it so directly, but Piper had the feeling they understood each other just as well.

"Thank you," Calypso said. "I'd be honoured. I promise I'll return, someday, when I'm ready. It would mean a lot to me if you welcomed me home when I do."

Nothing moved aside from what small things the fitful wind could shift, but Piper got the distinct impression that something was smiling. Not with a mouth, or anything nearly equivalent, but with its soul. An impercetible warmth, a subtle increase in gravity that drew them inwards and down as if into an earthy embrace.

"So," Piper put in, a little awkwardly. "Now that that's settled, you ready to blow this popsicle stand?"

Calypso paused a moment, evidently making sense of whatever Piper had said in ancient Greek to correspond to the nonsensical English idiom she'd had in mind. Then she gathered herself, took a deep breath, and said "Yes, I think I am."

"Awesome," said Piper, then hesitated. "Would it be weird if I caught up with you a little later, though?"

"Why?" Calypso asked, tilting her head, befuddled.

Piper shuffled her feet. "I kind of want to leave in my plane," she said, blushing. "It's kind of a full-circle thing. You can blame my cousins, they're all about how important stories are. Beside, who knows when we'll be back? It's already starting to get a little rusty around the edges; it'll go to pieces if I don't get it back to civilization soon. I figured I'd ask Hephaestus here if he could lend me some materials and maybe a strong arm or two. Not his own," she said, with a nod to Hephaestus' raised eyebrow. "Just one of his kids or something."

"I'm sure that could be arranged," Hephaestus said carefully. "I could take you both off this island in a blink _and_ have your plane retrieved in short order, though, if you wanted."

Looking back up the lawn to where her beautiful Kitfox rested against the treeline, wreathed in orange tarpaulin, and shook her head. "No, with all due respect, I don't think it would feel right. This is how I came, and this is how I should leave."

Hephaestus shrugged. "Suit yourself, then, girl. I still owe you my favour. I came for my son, not for you, so you haven't used it up yet. This is as good a time as any to call it in."

Piper grinned. "Thanks, unc."

The fire god actually blushed, faintly, beneath his burnished skin. He always did, when she called him that.

"In that case," Calypso said, "I'll stay, too."

"What?" Piper said, turning to stare at her. "Calypso, you're free. You're _finally_ free. Aren't you dying to go see what's out there?"

Calypso smiled, and it was like spring truly began for Ogygia in that moment. At least it did for Piper. "Yes," she said, "but I want to see it with you. So I'll wait. What's a few more weeks, after all this time? I could use a moment to catch my breath anyway."

Piper gaped. "Calypso-"

"I'm not leaving without you, and that's final," Calypso interrupted. Her face was stern but there was a merry light playing in her abyssal eyes.

"Fair enough," Piper said finally, after searching for an argument and coming up empty-handed. "Suit yourself."

"I will," Calypso said primly, openly grinning now.

Aphrodite, standing off to the side with the twins, covered her mouth with her hand, looking inordinately pleased with herself.

Piper scowled at her. "Don't go congratulating yourself," she said, "you're not forgiven yet."

Making an injured face, Aphrodite turned her free hand palm up and extended it towards them. "How would you like me to make up for it?" she asked, all ostentatious grace and generosity.

"Well, for starters, you could go talk to Dad," Piper said. "Explain to him what happened here and give him that apology you owe him. He's in rough shape, and he needs someone to help him through it. Goddess of love, right? Go love him."

Aphrodite grimaced. "Well, I suppose I had that coming. Consider it done. Anything else?"

"Don't ever use me like a tool without asking me again. For that matter, don't do that to anyone. Healthy communication is a staple when it comes to love, right? Get better at it."

Piper could see her mother bristling at her lecturing tone as much as at the content, but to her surprise, Aphrodite got herself under control with a minimum of affronted face-making and sighed ruefully.

"I should have known any child born of myself and Tristan McLean would be a force to be reckoned with," she said, sounding almost proud. "I promise to ask you if I ever need you again. For the rest, I'll... do my best."

"Weak, Mom," Piper said with a shrug, "but I guess I wouldn't believe you if you swore to be perfect."

"Pragmatism is not my strongest suit," Aphrodite said, "but this time I thought it might be more appropriate. I really will make an effort, Piper, I swear it."

Piper softened. She did love her mother, despite her... idiosyncrasies, and this was the most open and genuine Piper had ever seen her. She almost felt like someone Piper could get close to, one day. With some work. She liked that feeling. It would be nice if this lasted.

"Okay," Piper said, managing a smile. "Thanks."

"Well then," Aphrodite said, brightening up. "Now that we've wrapped this up, I should take these poor children home and get them cleaned up. They've had a very hard time of it, and they came straight here from the underworld so they haven't had a chance to rest at all."

Iris smiled at Piper, looking pitifully exhausted. Arke couldn't manage even that much; she just clung to her sister's arm, staring mutely at the ground. Nico looked like the walking dead. To be fair, though, he always looked like that.

"Sounds like a plan," Piper agreed. "You two take care of yourselves, okay? And take care of each other."

"We will," Iris promised. "Now that I have her back, I'm going to spoil her rotten, just you watch."

Aphrodite held out her hands to clasp their upper arms, and in a blink all four of them were gone, leaving only empty spring air where they'd stood.

"I suppose I shall take my leave as well," said Hecate, "unless you have further need of me?"

Piper looked at Calypso, who shook her head.

"No more nasty curses like this one, okay? Don't let Mom bully you into things."

Hecate looked surprised, then amused. "I will endeavour to avoid that."

With a wink, she too disappeared.

"Now, let's have a look at this plane of yours," Hephaestus said.

x

Piper scowled at the loom.

She still hadn't really gotten the hang of it, even with easy things like cotton. This was like skipping to the final level of a video game after grinding for five minutes. The glittering greyish thread in her hands was not cooperative at all.

"Piper, please," Calypso said, sounding fond but exasperated. "Just let me do it."

Drawing a deep breath, Piper clenched her jaw. "Thank you, Calypso, really, but no," she said firmly. "I have to do this myself. If you do it, all the enchantments will evaporate. They're tied to me. I always do my own maintenance for that reason, and this is no different."

Calypso sighed, but sat down without pushing the matter any further and compromised. "Here," she said, placing her hands over Piper's, just barely touching. "Close your eyes and picture what you want it to become. The more you think about how it should be flat because of the shape of the loom, the harder it will fight you. Think of it more like sculpture. Shape it with your hands. How many times did you handle them while cleaning them, or checking their condition? Your fingers know them better than your mind ever could, so get out of their way."

Piper obediently closed her eyes and pictured it in her mind. The graceful curves, elegant torsion, the tapering base that would feed into the round opening carved for it. The dark silvery colour, the iridescence deep in the folds of the metal. She could see it. After a long handful of focused moments, she could _feel_ it.

She took a deep breath and started to draw it into into reality.

When she opened her eyes, a dreamy eternity later, she was holding a picture-perfect Kitfox propeller blade, woven from the spun-out threads of the broken one. The air spirits had retrieved it from the lakebed for her, and Calypso had suggested feeding it into the loom. Piper hadn't expected it to work. She stared.

Calypso smiled at her. "See?"

"Not sure I'll ever get used to this kind of magic," Piper muttered. "I'm used to having to know what I'm doing for things to actually work."

"You live in a bigger world, now," Calypso said. "Or a smaller one, depending on how you're looking." She stroked Piper's hair and hugged her shoulders briefly. "Let's have lunch, then you can do the other one."

Their last lunch on the island was the vegetable stew it had made for Piper the first time, fittingly enough. Piper ate it slowly, feeling the weight of an age coming to a close. Everything she had done since the gods had left had felt like that. This was the last time she would do any of these things, at least for a while.

When she was done, finally, she passed the dish off to the wind spirits and sat down at the loom again. This time it was easier. She fed the rusty warped blade to it, spinning out a great spool of dark grey metallic thread. Then she tied it into the shuttle, closed her eyes, and set to work.

When she opened them this time, Calypso was sitting at her back, dozing lightly, and the sky outside was dark and clear and savaged with the brightest stars Piper had ever seen. When she shifted Calypso to go get a better look, Calypso blinked blearily and got up to follow her.

This alone would be a good reason to come back to the island every now and then, Piper thought. Surely the sky wasn't clearer than this anywhere but at the poles. She felt like she could see right into the depths of infinity, like she was barely attached to the skin of her tiny planet as it hurtled through the dark.

When people pictured the universe, when they pictured venturing out into it, they always pictured a little ship soaring out along a level plane, as if Earth were bobbing in the sea and there were shores just over the horizon. Since coming here, Piper had realized that, and forced herself to think about the other possibilities. Ships sailing straight up, perpendicular to the sun, into the infinity overhead. Ships sailing straight down, into the abyss that was just as infinite as the one extending out to the sides. The Earth was the center of nothing, because there _was_ no center; there were no edges to be equidistant from.

 _Immortality,_ she thought, and shivered. Time, being linear for human beings, had one edge she could be distant from, but the other was too far distant to see, if it existed. She had sailed out onto the silver surface of a sea far wider than her horizons, without knowing if there would be a shore on the far side to land on. Perhaps she would sail forever. Perhaps the ocean had no shores but the one she had left behind her.

"You said they landed on the moon," Calypso said softly, nestling into her side. "If humanity can do a thing, it will almost always do it again, until it becomes easy. When it becomes common for them to land on the moon, we should go, you and I. I would like to see the world from there."

"It's a date," Piper said, turning to grin at her. "Probably won't even be all that long now. We've been to Mars, and we have probes out beyond the edge of the solar system. We won't be stuck on Earth forever... and in the meantime, there's plenty to see."

"Piper," Calypso said after a moment of starry silence. "I love you."

For a moment, Piper hesitated, thinking of the curse. Then it came home yet again: there was no curse. Not between them. There had never been, not since the beginning. Not a moment of it had been false or forced. _This_ moment wasn't false or forced. They were free, the both of them.

"I love you too," Piper said softly.

She felt like the frog in the well, introduced to the sea for the first time. There was so much more to everything than she'd thought. There was no end, not to anything, not ever.

"I'm looking forward to seeing the future with you," Calypso said.

In a way, that said even more that what she had said first.

x

The fuselage settled into place with a satisfying click. Piper twisted the last of the screws into place, and tested the resistance.

It would work, or it wouldn't. If it didn't, they would land in the lake, no harm done. If it did... they would fly home the way she'd come, triumphant, history in the making. Hephaestus had given her a fresh tank of fuel, and she suspected that it would last several times longer than any airplane fuel currently known of should.

The tiny hold was loaded with what few things she'd deemed worthy of bringing back to civilization. The rest was stowed in the cave, under the protection of the genius loci and the wind spirits. The garden would be left to grow wild; when they came back, they would spend several warm days tidying up the wheels again. Better that than to stifle them with battening and kill their growth.

They had taken one last walk around the island's shoreline, one last chilly bath in the stream, eaten their final meal out of the pot.

Calypso, standing by the door, looked like a drawn bowstring.

"Are you ready?" Piper asked. It wasn't a rhetorical question. It had been less than a week since their godly visit, hardly an eyeblink in Calypso's immortal timeline. She had said she wanted to catch her breath. Was this long enough?

Piper had been suppressing the urge to start singing _A Whole New World_ with considerable effort the whole time, and her self-control was wearing thin.

Drawing a deep and deliberate breath, Calypso popped the door open. "Show me your world," she said.

Piper lost the battle in an instant. "Shining, shimmering, splendid," she sang under her breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," Piper said, flushing. "I'll explain when we're back."

Calypso cocked a brow. "This is going to be a long flight, right? You might as well entertain me."

Piper bit her lip, then giggled. She made a welcoming gesturing, coaxing Calypso to climb into the cockpit. She would be mostly in Piper's lap, but that was all right. They'd manage somehow. It wouldn't be _that_ long a flight.

Once they were both as comfortably esconced as they were going to get, Piper started the plane up. The roar of the engine startled Calypso, for a moment, but she relaxed as Piper explained what was happening.

"I can open your eyes," Piper then sang at volume as she turned the Kitfox's nose to face down the long sward towards the shore. "Take you wonder by wonder-"

The engine howled as she gave it as much gas as she could. When she released the brake, it took off down the green, jouncing over the bumps as it gained speed. Just as the shore approached, she pulled the yoke back and pointed the Kitfox's nose at the sky.

With a powerful, ecstatic cry, it peeled away from the ground into the transparent sky. The lake rippled below as if waving goodbye to them.

Calypso was shrieking softly into her hands, knees drawn up as far as she could get them, but Piper could see a wild, disbelieving smile peeking out from beneath her fingers.

Piper grinned and banked hard westwards, enjoying the way Calypso's eyes widened in mingled terror and euphoria.

They both felt it the moment they passed out of Ogygia's domain, the moment the lake ended and the sea began. Calypso dragged in a ragged breath, overcome, and buried her face in Piper's shoulder. Piper levelled out and put an arm around her.

"There won't be anything to see but water and sky for a while," she said gently, "so take your time."

"I'm so glad I stayed," Calypso mumbled into her shirt. "I think I needed to go this way, too. Slowly. So I could feel it."

Piper turned her face to kiss the top of Calypso's head and said nothing more.

Below them, the salt sea rolled away into the curving horizon, silver and bright and deep as Calypso's eyes. Clouds drifted past, curling around them soft as light then blowing away in the wind of their passage. It was a clear day, luckily. The world curved below them like a watery marble wrapped in a thin skin of air and colour. The sky opened its broad blue arms and welcomed the exile to her freedom.

They chased the sunset all the way home.

 **FIN**

 **A/N:** So, this was technically the final chapter! The main plot is now over, hope you've all enjoyed it. After this are just a couple of bonus epilogues, tying up loose ends and indulging in a freedom shenanigan or two. Once I'm done doing that, I'll mark this complete and you can take it off your subscribe lists. Thanks for reading!


	12. EPILOGUE 01: HOMECOMING

**Epilogue 01:** HOMECOMING

Leo was waiting on the tarmac when they landed, as Piper had expected. She still had no idea what to say him. How did one come home after being missing for most of a year with a person's presumed girlfriend on their arm and say something to make that somehow not awkward? She couldn't think of anything.

The Kitfox rolled to a reluctant stop. She popped the cockpit open, stumbled out on stiff, numb legs, and extended a hand to help Calypso down.

Leo's eyes were wide as teacups, dark and unreadable.

"Let me handle this," Piper whispered to Calypso, then turned, not waiting for a response.

Leo walked out to meet them once the propellers slowed, and came to a stop a few steps from Piper. "Hey," he said.

"Hey, kiddo," Piper said, biting her lip. "So, uh..."

Leo's gaze drifted past her to Calypso, who was stretching her stiffened muscles against the Kitfox's fuselage. The look in his eyes was pure, stark relief.

Drawing a breath and letting it out in a huff, he stomped forward across the last few feet and wrapped Piper up in a bear hug, his face planted in her shoulder as if he meant to stay there for the rest of the day. "I thought you were dead," he mumbled. "You can steal my girlfriend all you like as long as you come back in one piece."

Piper laughed, tears stinging at her eyes. She wrapped her arms around his wiry shoulders and squeezed hard enough to almost lift him off the ground. "I'm sorry," she said, meaning that to encompass everything she meant it for. "It's good to be back. I missed you."

"Ditto," said Leo, letting her go. "Don't ever scare me like that again. Capische?"

Piper snapped a mock salute. "Understood, sir."

Calypso giggled softly, bringing their attention to her. Piper tilted her head, inviting her over. She came, hands clasped in front of her, as close to shy as Piper had ever seen her.

"Hey, Calypso," Leo said, as she approached. He gave her a brash smile, but Piper knew him well enough to know that he wasn't feeling nearly as confident or carefree as that smile said. "How's it hanging?"

"Leo," she said, making a chagrined face. "Piper told me you swore on the Styx. Why would you do that?"

He shrugged uncomfortably. "It seemed like the thing to do, I guess? I was crazy about you, and your situation sucked. Honestly, I thought rescuing you would be a lot easier. Guess I learned my lesson there."

"Thank you for trying," Calypso said gently, and went over to give him a careful kiss on the cheek. "It means a lot to me that you did that."

"Yeah, whole lot of good it did," Leo grumbled, but he was blushing. "I just sat here messing around with that crystal while Piper did all the actual rescuing."

Piper frowned. "Don't be stupid," she said. "You couldn't have done better. The only reason things turned out like this is that Aphrodite used me to interfere."

He shrugged. "I know. She told us, on her way to see your dad. Still, you can't blame me for feeling kind of weird about it."

"Is 'weird' all you feel about it?" Piper asked cautiously. "I mean-"

"If you're talking about the fact that you're obviously dating the girl I devoted my life to saving... yeah, I guess," Leo said with a tired shrug. "Honestly, the longer I was away from the island, the less I felt it. Calypso, you're a great girl, anyone would be happy to date you - _I'd_ be happy to date you, if you wanted to try again down the road for some reason - but I'm not torn up about it, okay? I'll find someone else who actually likes me, and not because they're cursed to. One of these days. For sure."

Piper hugged him again. "Of course you will. Thanks for not being mad, I was really worried you would be."

Leo smacked her on the shoulder, maybe a little harder than strictly necessary. "I probably would've been mad back then, but these last seven years... well, you know how long they've been. You know how they changed me. So you just take good care of her, okay?" he said. "I mean, my feelings might have been mostly fake and all, but she's still amazing. She deserves the best. I guess I can't think of anyone better than you."

"Gee, thanks," Piper said drily, though she was genuinely touched. "I will. I promise."

Leo nodded with a grim smile that was earnestly trying to be something lighter, then looped his arm through hers and looked back over their shoulders until Piper reached out to catch Calypso's arm in hers.

"There are lots of people waiting to see you," he said. "Prepare to be smothered."

Piper grimaced. "Thanks for the heads up."

Sure enough, as soon as they entered the hangar, there was a crowd of people waiting to swarm her. Annabeth, Percy, Jason, Hazel, Frank... every demigod she was even sort of friends with was there, except for Nico for obvious reasons. Her cousins were there, too, and at the very back of the pack, her hollow-eyed father. He looked terrible, but at least there was light in his eyes again. There hadn't been the last several times she'd seen him in Katoptris.

She planted hugs and kisses on every torso and cheek that came within reach, but made her way steadily back through the throng until she reached him.

"Dad," she said unsteadily. "I'm sorry-"

He enveloped her in a powerful bear hug, openly desperate and emotional. Tristan McLean was an excellent actor, but he had made a point of never faking it with his daughter, and he wasn't faking anything now. He was a tall, dark-haired mess of emotions, and she felt drenched just standing there in his arms.

"I'm okay, Dad," she said when she next had air enough to speak. "I'm okay, all right? I'm sorry for scaring you. I didn't mean to."

"I know," he said, raw and unsteady. "I know," he said again, closing his eyes briefly, "but it's going to be hard to let you out of my sight again for a while."

"Did Mom-"

"Yes," he said, anticipating the rest of the question. "Yes, she came by yesterday evening and explained everything. We had a... a good talk. She apologized a lot, and actually seemed to mean it. She promised to come by a few days from now, so we could all talk together."

Piper let out a sigh of relief. Aphrodite was flighty at the best of times. It was good that she'd kept this one promise, at least. Whether or not she actually showed up in a few days' time, she had done enough to win a few points back in Piper's book.

"Good," she said. "Good. Look, I'm starving. Could we do lunch?"

He grinned, a shadow of his old radiance in it. "You bet. Thai?"

She grinned back, shorter and slimmer but in all other ways his mirror. "Obviously."

x

Hazel and Frank were waiting for them by the time they made it out to mountain house in Piper's car. Her father had kept it clean and well-oiled for her, thankfully.

The door looked like a portal, opening onto woodsmoke warmth out of the damp late spring night.

"Come on in," Hazel said, smiling, gold and dark earth and welcome in her eyes. "There's hot water on the stove. Do you want some tea?"

"Please," Piper said fervently. "Calypso?"

Calypso shivered, unwilling to relinquish her thick coat. "Yes, please," she said in a small voice.

The winds weren't any sharper here than they had been on the island, but on the island she had had the luxury of hiding in her cave and eating what the pot made for her until they eased. Here, they had had to venture out into them several times on the way. The Zhang-Levesque mountain house, the Sanctuary, was quite a long ways off the beaten path. It was cradled in the sloping arms of the Taconic mountains, surrounded by seas of grey stone and winter-bare deciduous trees and deep, ancient silence. A retreat for the weary and wounded and afraid.

They had built it themselves, based on Annabeth's plans, over the course of several years, flying construction materials in via supernatural methods when needed. The result was a deceptively large three-story wooden manse in the middle of nowhere, three hundred yards west up a mountainside from a cheerful clear river.

It was a safe house, in every sense of the word. The subterranean cellars carved into the bedrock were filled with dangerous and desirable magical artifacts, kept hidden and protected until their owners came back for them. The upper floors were often filled with semi-divine guests, fleeing pursuit or recovering their strength. A sacred space, a sanctuary.

Piper couldn't think of anywhere better to bring Calypso. Here, she would have all the time and patience and care she needed to adjust to the world beyond her island, until she was ready to venture out into the faster currents.

Frank sat them down at the hand-hewn table while Hazel poured them tea. He had always been a slow and mellow person, but being here with Hazel had made him into something that almost felt less like a person than like part of the land. He was warm and deep and welcoming and almost entirely silent, though Piper knew full well he could talk up a storm if she got him going. The wildness that had always been in him was more pronounced, but not in a way that felt at all threatening. It was more that they were in his territory now, and that meant that if they were friends they would be protected, just as enemies would be dealt with.

Calypso cupped her mug of tea between her hands and looked around, taking in the rough-hewn rafters and knick-knacks on the windowsill. "This is a good place," she said.

She meant more by it than was immediately evident, Piper knew. She didn't just mean she liked it here. She meant there was something about it that stood defiant against evil and cruelty, something about it that made the world better just by existing. Ogygia had been a good place too, despite its distasteful assignment.

"Yeah," said Piper, sipping her tea, which she thought was a blend of chamomile, mint, lemongrass, rosehips, and a number of other delicious things. It was making her feel warm and drowsy. "I know. That's why we're here."

Piper felt Calypso's hand on her thigh, warm and firm.

"Thank you," Calypso said quietly. "The... airport was too much for me, and I could hardly accept the cities we drove through. This is strange to me, too, but strange in a way I can accept."

"That was the idea," Piper said, squeezing Calypso's idea in return. "I want to show you everything the modern world has to offer, but I don't want to short-circuit your brain or anything." Again, she wondered what she had said in ancient Greek to correspond to "short-circuit".

Calypso seemed to understand, in any case. "We have all the time in the world," she said. "There's no need to rush. I haven't done anything quickly in millennia. It will take time to adjust to the pace you're accustomed to living at."

"I know," said Piper. "I won't rush you. You can stay here as long as you need to, or want to, okay? I might have to leave for a bit now and again to do my job, but you don't have to come with me. Just take it easy."

"Seconded," Hazel said, sliding into a chair across from them around the round wooden table. "We built this place for all kinds of situations, and yours definitely qualifies. Don't worry about the money, Piper, you know that's not a problem for me."

Hazel could summon gold and jewels out of the bare earth, just by walking over it. It came in very handy when it came to funding her passion project. She probably had millions' worth of nuggets and raw gems stored in one of the cellars, waiting for judicious appraisal and sale. She and Frank were very careful about how and when they introduced her magically gotten gains to the market, and as a result they were sustainably but not ostentatiously rich.

"Thanks, Hazel," Piper said with a warm smile for her old friend.

"That's what we're here for," Frank said, settling his big hands on his wife's shoulders. The years hadn't changed him much, only refined the angles and curves that made up his broad, feral outline. He was wilder now, but as gentle as he had ever been, or gentler. Wild things could be vicious, merciless, when the situation demanded such, but they could be altruistic and soft when the situation demanded _that,_ and Frank embraced both. He would destroy any threat to his home, and be the warm, generous presence making it worth living in.

When they started yawning, Frank and Hazel herded them up the stairs to the second floor and lit the fire in the hearth of a large guest room. A king bed spread with a clearly home-made quilt was the unquestioned ruler of the space, but the patterned rug and the paisley wallpaper demanded their own share of the attention. In any other room, the medley of patterns and colours would have clashed, but here they only seemed to enrich the warm ambience.

Piper and Calypso curled up on the massive bed together, under the vast spread of the quilt, and listened to the wind and the trees until they fell asleep.

x

On the third morning, Piper left.

She had explained it to Calypso the night before, and they had both agreed, though Calypso had taken some convincing and a number of promises before agreeing to stay where she was.

It wasn't that she had fallen abruptly out of love, or anything like it. Quite the opposite, if anything. She was as desperately, deeply in love with Calypso as she had ever been, and she was full of visions of the future that made her ache to reach them.

The thing was, Calypso had spent millennia at the mercy of a curse that made her love anyone who came within reach, and she had been rescued by someone she had had almost as little choice about loving, due to Aphrodite's meddling.

She deserved the chance to be free _and_ alone, to think about how she wanted to approach the future without a lover staring over her shoulder at every moment.

So Piper went home for a little while, entrusting her to Hazel and Frank and the healing calm of the house they had built.

There were so many things to take care of back in the sphere of her mostly ordinary life. Friends to comfort and catch up with, family to reassure, contacts to re-establish.

Aphrodite, miraculously, showed up just as she'd promised, and spent hours talking with Piper and her father. Over the centuries, she had become detached from the reality of love, the daily minutiae of it, the unreasonable humanity of it. As her worshippers had dwindled, so had her connection to the core of what she was meant to represent.

Piper and Tristan brought her home, modern-day worshippers in the guise of family. They taught her anew what she was meant to be, and she answered to their expectations as only a god - veins pulsing with the lifeblood of belief and expectation - could hope to.

She would correct her errors, heal the results of her cruelties. She would be better. She would, because they believed she would.

Piper spent long hours with Leo, as well, helping him adjust his life to the absence of the merciless chains of his oath. She offered to take the crystal off his hands, to help him let go of the path he had bound himself to, but he had refused. It was a memorial to the years of his life he had spent on that ultimately futile oath born of false love, and he wanted to keep it to remind himself of the cost of impulsive decision-making.

She spent even longer hours with her father, who had been unable to work since her disappearance and seemed hardly able to believe that she had really come back to him. He frequently questioned his perception of reality, wondering if he was seeing the truth or just what he most wanted to see. Aphrodite's admissions had helped, but he was still so fragile, so unsure.

In between, she spent time with her other friends, who had first grieved her and then been willing to spend their lives to find her. Annabeth especially found it difficult to let her go when she came to visit. She had realized first where Piper might be, and had been ready and willing to go form a war party and come extract her. Tartarus lay heavy on her soul, visible to anyone who knew her well enough, but she had still been willing to return to the deepest hell she knew for the sake of a friend.

Piper was surrounded by good people, and she was ten times more grateful for them now for having them lost for a time.

She gave Calypso a month to find out who she was and what she wanted outside the island and the curse and the fate she had expected to be permanent.

Then she went back to the homely house in the mountains and faced her own fate.

It took some willpower to get out of the car and walk up the driveway, but she wasn't even halfway there when the door flew open and Calypso came thundering down the porch steps.

Piper barely had time to brace for her weight and momentum, and spun her around to diffuse it a little before letting her down.

"Did you miss me?" she asked, low and rakish and right in Calypso's ear.

" _Yes,"_ Calypso said. "Piper, I missed you so much. I haven't changed my mind at all."

Piper tried unsuccessfully not to cry. "I missed you too," she said thickly. "I'm glad."

Calypso wrapped her arms around Piper's neck and dragged her down into a long, thorough, purposeful kiss. "So," she said, when she finally let Piper go, "are you ready to blow this popsicle stand?'

For a dizzy moment, Piper wondered what Calypso had said in ancient Greek for her to hear that, but she was too giddy with the possibilities to dwell on it.

"Hell yeah I am," she said. "Where do you want to go first?"

"Anywhere," said Calypso, smiling with the radiance of every star in the night sky. "Everywhere."

"That can be arranged," said Piper with an answering grin. "Go pack your things."

 **X**


End file.
